The Dillinger Escape Plan at Terminal 5
photo by Stephen Odom

The Dillinger Escape Plan played their final shows at T5 (videos, setlists, night 3 review)

“It’s been a good ride, right?” asked Greg Puciato of the 3,000 assembled to witness The Dillinger Escape Plan’s final show at NYC’s Terminal 5 on Friday, 12/29. The crowd packing the floor and craning their necks from the overstuffed balconies seemed to agree. After twenty years of chaos and the preceding two sold-out nights, featuring a bevy of guests including Faith No More’s Mike Patton and past members Dmitri Minakakis and Brian Benoit, this was really it for the mathcore trailblazers from Jersey. And what a sendoff it was.

I wasn’t able to catch first openers Daughters, but the room was jammed to capacity as Pittsburgh metalcore crew Code Orange ripped up the direct support slot. Theirs was a truly hellish racket, sludgy and brutal with sheets of harsh noise and occasional fits of melodicism, all streamlined for mayhem. Their demands for more action from the crowd read redundant after a while; the pit extended all the way to a guy moshing with himself in the third balcony.

While the reception for Code Orange went beyond that of the average opener, the truly rapturous response to Dillinger taking the stage quickly reminded us all what we were here for. With the ominous blast of a Haxan Cloak track as intro music, Puciato, guitarists Ben Weinman and Kevin Antreassian, drummer Billy Rymer and bassist Liam Wilson strolled on stage together for the final time, leading off with the first track from their debut 1997 EP and the first from last year’s farewell LP Dissociation.

For 19 songs and nearly two hours, Dillinger did what they’ve always done best, whipping the expanse of the Terminal 5 floor into a total frenzy. The setlist spanned as far and wide across the band’s six LPs as one would hope, even balancing their signature frantic fury with some mellower moments, like Ire Works’ “Mouth of Ghosts.” But mellow was hardly the directive of the evening. The band gave its all and the crowd gave it right back, with Weinman and Puciato seizing their last opportunities to leap into the mania. A genuinely epic final performance of “43% Burnt” saw Puciato take his final dive from the balcony soundboard.

Unlike nights one and two of the band’s final stand, guest appearances and other surprises were kept to a minimum. For the majority of their last dance, it was Dillinger going out on top, alone. There was another brief appearance by Dimitri Minakakis, but only for the night’s second encore and very last song did they pull an unexpected move, bringing out the Seven)Suns string quartet for Dissociation’s mournful closing title track. A song that Weinman has called a “statement that we get it now, and we’re ready to move on” was a fitting elegy for Dillinger both on record and on stage.

Pictures from all three nights are in the gallery above. A full-set video of night 3, a few videos from the collaborative songs with Mike Patton and Brian Benoit on night 1, and a video of Dimitri Minakakis’s guest appearance on night 2, along with all three setlists, are below.

Night two review on Invisible Oranges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-xDzhz3LHE

Night One Setlist (via)
Set 1: Irony is a Dead Scene w/ Mike Patton
Hollywood Squares
When Good Dogs Do Bad Things (with Brian Benoit)
Pig Latin (with Brian Benoit)
Come to Daddy (Aphex Twin cover) (with Brian Benoit)
Malpractice (Faith No More cover) (with Brian Benoit)

Set 2
Panasonic Youth
Destro’s Secret
Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants
Surrogate
Sugar Coated Sour
Weekend Sex Change
Hero of the Soviet Union
Dead as History
Fix Your Face
Farewell, Mona Lisa
When I Lost My Bet

Encore:
Limerent Death
Sunshine the Werewolf (with Brian Benoit)

Night Two Setlist (via)
Prancer
Milk Lizard
Jim Fear
Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants (with Sheridan Durant from School of Rock, Easton PA)
Room Full of Eyes
Sugar Coated Sour
Weekend Sex Change
The Running Board
Symptom of Terminal Illness
Black Bubblegum
One of Us Is the Killer
Crossburner
Good Neighbor
Calculating Infinity
The Mullet Burden
Sandbox Magician
Abe the Cop

Encore:
Limerent Death
43% Burnt (with Dmitri Minakakis)

Night Three Setlist (via)
Proceed With Caution
Limerent Death
Panasonic Youth
Milk Lizard
Baby’s First Coffin
Dead as History
Surrogate
Happiness Is a Smile
One of Us Is the Killer
Nothing to Forget
Low Feels Blvd
Mouth of Ghosts
Unretrofied
Sandbox Magician (with Dimitri Minakakis)
When I Lost My Bet
Sunshine the Werewolf

Encore:
Farewell, Mona Lisa
43% Burnt

Encore 2:
Dissociation (with Seven)Suns and Adam Doll; live debut)

photos by Stephen Odom