Gig Review: The Dillinger Escape Plan + H09909 at Enmore Theatre, Sydney

Live review: The Dillinger Escape Plan and H09909 at the Enmore Theatre,  Sydney, August 16 2025

By BRIAN GIFFIN

THE reunion that was on nobody’s bingo card finally swept into the Enmore this evening.

The Dillinger Escape Plan’s last show here was at the Crowbar, before it was called that, and so oversold it was dangerous even by this band’s standards.

That was nine years ago, and we’ve all gotten a bit older since then. By contrast, then, the scene at the Enmore was positively serene – until the lights went down and Horror, stylised as H09909 for some reason, laid into the crowd.

A mixture of heavy sampling, live drums, electro beats, industro-punk and nu-metal with rapping set against dark lighting, they were both unexpected and compelling. Lifting samples from Ozzy, Motley and others, H09909 was an unorthodox, pulsating explosion of high energy that’s part Korn, part hip hop and part Nine Inch Nails if they were a bunch of angry black guys. As unconventional as they seemed, by the end they had won everyone over as the perfect warm up for the storm of chaos about to be unleashed.

The casualness with which the Dillinger lads entered the arena was instantly offset when “Destro’s Secret” erupted and Ben Weinman began thrashing around with his guitar as if they were attacking each other. The sound wasn’t that great at first, as if the old Enmore had no idea how to handle the small scale nuclear strike of riffs and beats that was “The Running Board”, but soon that was sorted.

As mentioned, we’re all older now – including the band. The pit seethed but it wasn’t the chaotic miasma of years ago. On stage, the reckless abandon bordering on self-destructiveness is reserved mainly to Weinman’s battle with his guitar and Dimitri Miniakakis’s frequent trips into the crowd. But their sheer unrelenting musical onslaught remains unmatched and undiminished. A cover of “Don’t Dream it’s Over” smashes by but it’s so unrecognisable it could literally be any other song. Miniakakis’ mic gives out at one point, then Weinman’s guitar, but the assault continues almost unabated. Billy Ryman somehow keeps everything together with the most stripped back of kits, calculating the infinite time-signature shifts and tempo changes like a mathcore version of Rat Scabies. Ministry’s “Just One Fix” veers into “Weekend Sex Change” and Dillinger are still in high gear as they rip through the complexities of “Variations on A Cocktail Dress” and “Monticello”.

Finally, it’s time and Weinman steps out onto the crowd as his band brings down “43% Burnt” to bring their chaos to a close – a masterclass in sonic battery that remains second to none, all over in less time than a post-2010 Iron Maiden album. They returned, and they conquered.