While there’s little to separate The Dillinger Escape Plan and Sunday’s headliners, Four Year Strong in terms of draw, there’s only one band’s performance on everyone’s lips all weekend. The east coast mathcore metaller whatevers are hosting the most anticipated set of Hevy Festival. We could not wait to see them.

Six things we learnt from The Dillinger Escape Plan @ Hevy Festival 2011

1) It’s inescapable – the sound is fucking atrocious. There’s certainly a case to be made that The Dillinger Escape Plan shows need to be indoors, or at least in a tent, but bet the the nuances of tone and intricacies of melody of opener, ‘Farewell, Mona Lisa’ are lost to the smoke-filled ether, you start to agree and walk around, annoyed, until you find the sweet spot.

2) Regardless of sound issues, this is an absolutely fantastic performance from one of the best live bands in the world for at least a decade. You can count on one hand the number of bands that can touch DEP in terms of intensity and atmosphere. The number of people who are here just for them is staggering. It’s what makes the shit sound even more disappointing.

The Dillinger Escape Plan @ Hevy Festival - Saturday, 06 August 2011 c/o Ben Gibson

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3) While not a single member lets the band down, it’s still all about Greg Puciato and Ben Weinman. The burly singer is a furious gorilla of a man, stalking the stage and taking a song to stay perfectly still and charging the crowd to do the same, while the bearded guitarist is a ball of electricity charging across the stage, using speaker stacks as leverage and the riser at the front of stage to imperious effect. They are the glorious focal points of this band.

4) It’s not just the paying festival goers who are excited about DEP. With Sam Carter singing with the band and Matt Caughthran trying to make it onstage for some impromptu jamming but being sadly thwarted by some over-zealous security, they’re a band’s band as well. It’s because The Dillinger Escape Plan are awesome.

Watch The Dillinger Escape Plan play live @ Hevy Festival 2011:

5) It’s the blend of the setlist that makes tonight work so well. From the brutality of ’43% Burnt’ and the jarring swings of ‘Panasonic Youth’ to the gentle atmospherics of ‘Widower’ and the pop sensibilities of ‘Black Bubblegum’ and ‘Milk Lizard’. They’ve got everything and they throw it all at the crowd.

6) Having arrived onstage a few minutes late, Dillinger ended up with the unintentional closer of ’43% Burnt’. That’s not such a bad thing except they have a three-song encore scheduled. The problem being that as they return to play a cover of Nirvana’s ‘Territorial Pissings’ the sound has cut out but they persevere in the most acoustic of fashion. No you couldn’t really hear it, but what’s new there? They had ‘Good Neighbor’ and ‘The Mullet Burden’ to come as well. Bugger.

Check out the rest of our Hevy Festival 2011 coverage here.