Ben Weinman, a guitarist formerly of New Jersey metalcore band The Dillinger Escape Plan, teamed up with Empty Streets for the song “Fracas” and now a video for the song has been released. Empty Streets is the solo project of Aaron Thompson. According to the video description, all proceeds from the single will go to the Party Smasher Sanctuary, a New Jersey animal sanctuary that Weinman and his wife founded.
The video opens with night vision shots of trees but in between shots the video breaks up and occasionally gets a little fuzzy. Then the picture shakes and breaks up dramatically before turning into an overlap between the night vision trees and colorful trees in broad daylight. The sunlight attempts to break through the trees before the video cuts to a blue night vision circle which disappears in a similar fashion to when the night vision trees shook and broke up.

“Fracas” opens with a piano and glockenspiel as well as a saw wave sound. Vocals enter as well as strings and brass playing very low notes. By the time the drums enter the song, screaming can be heard in the background and vocals being processed through several synthesized effects such as vocoder, phaser, distortion and reverb effects. There are no lyrics in the song other than the beginning line spoken in a foreign language.

The Dillinger Escape Plan was founded in 1997 by Weinman, bassist Adam Doll, Dimitri Minakakis who sang and drummer Chris Pennie. The group disbanded in 2017 following shows on December 27, 28 and 29 and has not regrouped since. Weinman is currently a member of Suicidal Tendencies.

photo credit: Raymond Flotat