Ben Weinman Clears Air on Greg Puciato’s Claim About Dillinger Escape Plan Reunion Offers

UPDATE (Oct. 2, 2023): The Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist and founder Ben Weinman has sternly disputed Greg Puciato's claims about offers the band has received to reunite. He tells Metal Injection that he and Puciato have not directly spoken since shortly after the band's final show in 2018 and that "the rest of the band has nothing to do with the information Greg has put out there" noting "none of it is accurate."

"I think it is very important to mention that Greg has no ownership of the Dillinger Escape Plan as an entity, no ownership in the overarching corporation, and has no ownership over the name and he never has. He has always been paid as an independent contractor and he has no interactions with our booking agent, lawyers, etc.," Weinman explains.

The guitarist later details, "The truth is that any discussions of a reunion with Greg have been shut down before money was discussed. There have been no concrete money offers for a reunion with Greg – meaning that the conversations have never gotten to money as they've always been shut down immediately – that I or anyone on our team is aware of. I think there was some preliminary talks thrown around for us to do Furnace Fest, but our agent's response was that we are not entertaining reunion offers at this time. The end. I have been approached a few times indirectly by people who had talked to Greg while he was out on the road about doing a reunion, and what was conveyed to me was that he really wanted to do it and that it should be discussed with me."

Read the full interview here.

Original Story

Nearly six years removed from their final show, The Dillinger Escape Plan still have no plans to reunite and, according to frontman Greg Puciato, the band is turning down "astronomical" amounts of money to do so.

The members of the influential group have all remained busy in various capacities, Puciato being the most active of the bunch. He's the singer in Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell's solo band and has released post-TDEP albums with Killer Be Killed, The Black Queen, as a solo artist and, most recently put out God Made Me An Animal, the debut album by Better Lovers, which features former members of Every Time I Die and Fit For an Autopsy's Will Putney.

Speaking with Revolver about his latest musical pursuits, Puciato shoots down any notion that the musical similarities between Better Loves and The Dillinger Escape Plan will lead to a desire to reunite Dillinger.

In fact, the vocalist even surprised himself when he found the inspiration to contribute to Better Lovers as the group was in its most infant state. "I wasn't jonesing to scream and jump off shit. [That frustration is] just not fucking frothing out of me like it was back then," Puciato admits.

Regarding The Dillinger Escape Plan, he says, “I don’t miss it at all. And I hate to say this, but if we were to get back together, it would be for money. And I don’t fucking want to do that. Every year, all those festivals… they just throw astronomical amounts of money at us to get back together. And it’s never even been something that we even entertain."

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Most farewell tours have honest intentions and it's often money — a lot of it — that is the catalyst for a reunion, whether it's for special one-off appearances or for the long term.

"When Dillinger ended, I thought to myself, ‘Okay, I want at least five years,’ and now it’s been six and I can’t imagine it happening within the next five years, even," Puciato confesses, acknowledging that he understands that the passage of time has the capacity to change people's minds.

There has been next to no buzz about a reunion either, except for a brief blip in time last November. Drummer Billy Rymer posted an Instagram Story, typing out a setlist of Dillinger songs beneath "Furnace Fest 2023," leading many to speculate that the band was planning to reunion at the festival. Responding to fan comments, guitarist Ben Weinman immediately quashed the buzz, confirming no reunion was set to take place.