THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN Guitarist Talks Next Album In New Interview

Scott Smith of May The Rock Be With You recently conducted an interview with THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN guitarist Ben Weinman. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

May The Rock Be With You: Between now and early next year when you head back to Australia for Soundwave 2012, is it a time for a well-earned break?

Ben: Well, we are heading back again to the U.K. again, actually, for some more shows with MASTODON. But we are also getting ready and about to start diving into writing the new DILLINGER album and we will continue doing that up until Soundwave and after as well.

May The Rock Be With You: You mentioned writing the new album. Has that actually started yet?

Ben: Well, we've been messing around with a few ideas in the tour bus, but it's really starting tonight when we will dive into it and get some new ideas going.

May The Rock Be With You: Having toured your most recent album, "Option Paralysis", which you released in what, March 2010… what are your thoughts on that album now when you reflect on it now?

Ben: Yeah, it's hard to believe It's been that long; we've hit the road and haven't looked back since. The songs are still fresh to us and there are songs we haven't yet played live that we really want to. We tour so much that it's hard to often stop and take inventory on it all. In general we are excited to be working on new music but I'm still excited by "Option Paralysis", you know?!

May The Rock Be With You: Looking back on the process of writing and recording "Option Paralysis", have you got any key things in your head at the moment that you are looking to change up for the next album?

Ben: That is a good question. You know, we never really go into writing a new record with any big picture; we definitely start making songs that we want and that we are interested in. After it's all done, then it's real easy to look at the body of work and say it's pretty obvious where we've been as a band and personally has had an effect on the way that this record sounds. We can definitely hear it on our past records and I know it when I listen back to it that it's obvious what was going through our heads and happening in our lives and the effect it had on the record. But we never dive into it with a big picture saying we want the album to sound like "this," it's about recording something that we enjoy and feel good about it.

May The Rock Be With You: I guess one of the fundamental things this time around was the way you released the album on your own label, Party Smasher… How was that whole experience?

Ben: We did it in collaboration with the French label Seasons Of Mist and has our own moniker on it, the Party Smasher imprint, and it's really our first step in trying things differently. We'd come out of a long contract and given the state of the industry we wanted to be in a position where we could move forward with as many options as possible to maintain a certain level of creative control and options considering the state of the business and that was definitely the best way we could continue to be productive and not tie ourselves down to anything we might regret in the future. So we're pretty excited and it's a pretty open-ended situation for us business-wise and we like to keep it that way.

Read the entire interview at May The Rock Be With You.