The Dillinger Escape Plan, KOKO, London

. The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato is up on the balcony of KOKO and about to take a stage dive into the crowd some 10ft below. He isn’t the first person to do it tonight and he won’t be the last. Bedlam reigns; the lunatics have taken over the asylum. 

Of course, to get to this point there has been something by way of build up. Three Trapped Tigers prove this evening that they are one of the most instrumentally able bands going – their churning, bolshy electro powered on by the insane sticksmanship of Adam Betts who is, quite simply, one of the best drummers in the UK. It would be fair to say though that by comparison to tonight’s headliners they are a relatively understated affair – master technicians rather than master showmen.

And that, ultimately, is what makes The Dillinger Escape Plan so abidingly special – they are undisputed kings of arpeggios and rhythmic sleight of hand just are much as they are peerless when it comes to giving breath stealingly physical live performances. On record they have changed the game again and again, inducing seismic shifts in the genres that they straddle. Tonight they take everything from their flawless back catalogue and ramp it not to 11, but to 13. In KOKO’s cavernous, theatrical surrounding they maraud through cuts from modern classics like ‘Ire Works’ and ‘Miss Machine’ alongside the more mellifluous work from this year’s ‘One Of Us Is The Killer’. Not even a shitty crowd control barrier of the fatigue of a 40 date European tour can seemingly prevent them doing what they do best: destroying everything.

‘Black Bubblegum”s falsetto effortlessly lights up the room, ‘Panasonic Youth’ turns it into a snake pit of flailing limbs and the eponymous track from that recent full length threatens to lift the roof off the place with the force of its chorus. By the time Ben Weinman follows his burly colleague Puciato into the arms of the waiting audience, he’s already spent 20 seconds windmilling his guitar round his head by its strap. Apparently some people think punk is dead - it’s alive and well and utterly embodied in this band.

They close with a bowel-melting cover of Aphex Twin’s ‘Come To Daddy’ before finishing us off with ‘43% Burnt’, a song that is nearly 15 years old but which, tonight, feels light years ahead of pretty much anything contemporary. As the house lights fade up and everyone struggles to pull their mangled heads together, a look around the room reveals a couple of open wounds and even more open mouths that this is what TDEP do night in, night out. You see, if genuine greats are the ones who are able to achieve consistent quality their chosen field, then The Dillinger Escape Plan are one of the greatest of their generation. Ongoingly brilliant yet proudly unpredictable – they are the best of all possible worlds.