MIKE PATTON | How Dillinger Escape Plan got Patton to Sing For Them.

Fifteen years ago Dillinger Escape Plan released their EP Irony Is A Dead Scene featuring Mike Patton on vocals.

This collaboration produced music that is revered by fans of both artists to this day, but exactly how did this marriage of artists come about? As the band comes to an end Guitarist Ben Weinman told Metal Sucks during a podcast interview.

"We have just recorded our first full-length record 'Calculating Infinity' in 1999, and Mr. Bungle was doing a tour for their album 'California.' We were in the studio finishing up and we got a call from one of the guys at Relapse records who said that they had talked to the Bungle guys and they were interested in having us on the US tour, two months across the US.

"It was kinda last-minute, we weren't prepared, we were still finishing up our album. But yeah, we had to, because we were such massive fans, and at that point, it was such an opportunity for us.We were such a small band, so to get in front of new people, and also these people to be fans of a band like Mr. Bungle, it was such a great opportunity. So we end up getting into a van, driving cross-country to California and starting a tour with them.

"And one of the first people to hear our album was Mike. He was a fan before we went on a tour because he asked us. And once he got that album, he became more of a fan.We became friendly over the tour, and just realized we were like-minded. We had a similar creative process, and it would make sense at some point to work on something together. 

"So fast-forward to a couple of years later, we were in between singers. Our first singer Dimitri had moved on and we started recording demos of new songs.I was like, 'Hey, maybe Mike wants to sing on these.' What we do is put out an EP in between singers and that's how we keep relevant while we're searching for a guy.

"And we sent Patton the songs and he said, 'Hey if it's something that I feel like I can do something over it makes sense, I'm down.' So we sent him those songs pretty done recording wise. And like two weeks later he came back with a demo of him doing vocals on it. It was that simple, really."

 "I think Patton is the ultimate heavy rock singer guy. But there's very few guys that cover that amount of diverstity that are not corny, in my opinion. [laughs] So you're gonna have diversity and a lot of vocal range over heavy music, it's really difficult to do that and not kind of tip into that corny territory. I'm really, really hard on us, myself, and what we put out there. 

"So I think we just needed to have someone who we knew to not only do what we did in the past, but step up to the plate what we were doing with Mike. And then on top of that also take us somewhere new. So we definitely were pretty specific about the level of person we needed in the band."

Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar

Listen to the full interview