THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN Guitarist Discusses Drummer Change

July 13, 2007

Chris Harris of MTV.com reports: Last month, when THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN revealed that founding drummer Chris Pennie had left the highly technical mathcore outfit to join progressive rockers COHEED AND CAMBRIA, no one wanted to believe it. The surprise move baffled the band's allegiant fans almost as much as it confused the DILLINGER dudes, who started to wonder if Pennie had been fostering some strange, secret obsession with unicorns and minotaurs.

"We found out about him playing with COHEED on the Internet," explained guitarist Ben Weinman. "[Frontman] Greg [Puciato] forwarded me a link to an announcement, and I'm like, 'What?!?' At that point, though, he was just going to record with them — it wasn't like he wasn't going to play with us, but we were questioning keeping him in the band every day because it was embarrassing. But obviously, we felt that his talent was so needed for the band that we tried to make it work, and we let him go through this little midlife crisis or whatever it was, because we never thought he'd join that band over this band. It doesn't make sense. They're not LINKIN PARK. If you're going to sell out, sell out, you know?

"It's unbelievable, and the funny thing is, before all of this started going down, he used to make fun of that band, left and right," Weinman continued. "He'd imitate [COHEED frontman Claudio Sanchez's] voice and would say, 'They f---ing suck' and all this sh--. It's funny, because everybody just looks at us like, 'Huh?' And we had the same reaction. The other day, we were hanging out with [(+44) kitman] Travis Barker, [and] the guy we have playing drums with us now [STOLEN BABIES' Gil Sharone] is good friends with him, and he's a big DILLINGER fan, and he's like, 'What happened to your drummer?' We told him, 'He quit and joined COHEED,' and he just looked so confused."

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