A loud, nasty, heavy power trio that combined an unrelenting battery of noise with the intricacy of progressive rock and pop sensibility well beyond their collective years, Dibble Edge spent five tumultuous years hell-bent on rearranging the face of mainstream rock, and while the party may be over, the scar left on the New York City rock scene will be prominent and ugly for years to come.
Frontman Tom Schecter was only 17 years old when he formed Dibble Edge in Wallingford, CT with bassist Chetan Huded and drummer Chris Maldonado in 2002. Drawing on the influences of their youth -- the Smashing Pumpkins, the Stone Temple Pilots, Guns N' Roses and others -- the band soon gained a dedicated following with their hard sound. In just two years, the band recorded two EPs: The Oscar Schmidt Collection (2003) and Five Songs in Two Days (2004), before the original lineup went their separate ways, leaving Schecter to retool Dibble Edge in New York City at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
With a new five-man lineup drawn from the university's music scene, including Pat Clements on bass, Avi Davis and Chris Lane on guitar and Philadelphia native Andrew Nusca on drums, the band went full-tilt into the downtown Manhattan music scene, sharing the stage with countless bands including the likes of country star Shooter Jennings and alt-rockers Halestorm at CBGB & OMFUG and The Continental, respectively. But when Lane and Davis quit in April 2005, the band went on yet another hiatus.
Dibble Edge finally found their man in Los Angeles native Brandon Intelligator in October 2005, just in time to start recording a third EP, The Anvil of our Discontent, at Chung King Studios with producer Josh Silberberg. The record arrived in April 2006 and silenced a merciless critic's panning in Washington Square News with a landslide victory in the paper's Battle of the Bands a week later. The only people who weren't surprised by the victory were the boys themselves. "We know we've got our friends out there, and they've had our backs for awhile," Schecter says. "We knew they were gonna vote for us."
"Then again, we can be a little tough to handle. It's like with whisky: some people just can't help but make a face." The headlining marked the first live Dibble Edge performance in almost a year, and featured Schecter on bass guitar. Clements officially departed in August 2006.
The trio returned to the studio with Silberberg and first-time co-producer Theo Aronson in October 2006 to begin work on their first full-length album, The Ageless & The Insane -- musically, sonically, and lyrically heavier than anything the band had recorded before. The band capped their sessions recording the song "New Generation" with legendary engineer and producer Eddie Kramer (The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin, KISS, Derek and the Dominoes). It would become the jewel that crowned an already formidable album; The Ageless & The Insane is an hard-edged yet poetic look at the world and the psyche of its creator, taking the listener on a breakneck drag race through hell and back: From the thunderous, feedback-soaked opening of “Tidal Waves,” to the funereal acoustic “Shanty,” to the final, frantic climax of “Bleed Me Dry,” it is all at once raw and refined, angsty and arrogant.
The making of The Ageless & The Insane was featured in a full-length feature in the May 23 edition of The Village Voice. In June, two weeks after one final unplugged show at Fat Baby in New York City, the band quietly and amicably parted ways...Nusca pursued a master's in journalism at Columbia University, Intelligator joined fellow New York rock band The Restless as lead guitarist, and Schecter started a new project, the Urchins of South Street.
After discussion, Dibble Edge rejoined for one triumphant last show on Thursday May 22, 2008, at Fat Baby on the Lower East Side.
"Thank you for coming out tonight. We are Dibble Edge, or at least we were 12 seconds ago."
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