Greg Puciato

Gregory John Puciato (born March 27, 1980) is an American musician best known as the former lead vocalist and lyricist of the mathcore band the Dillinger Escape Plan. In addition to being a solo artist, he fronts the band the Black Queen, and is a member of Killer Be Killed, in which he also plays guitar. He also performed alongside Jerry Cantrell from 2019 to 2025, providing backup vocals and lead vocals on Layne Staley-sung songs for Cantrell's solo tours. In early 2023 he co-founded and fronted the metal/hardcore/rock supergroup Better Lovers, before leaving in early 2026. In 2018, Puciato and visual artist Jesse Draxler co-founded the art collective and record label Federal Prisoner.

Puciato is noted for the intensity of his live performances, wide vocal and stylistic range, outspoken views, and controversy stemming from his bands' performances and interviews. Rolling Stone said that "few singers live, breathe and often literally bleed their art like he does."

Early life Puciato was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He is an only child. Puciato's parents owned many vinyl records by artists such as Elton John, Bee Gees, Prince, Black Sabbath, Mitch Miller and Molly Hatchet, as well as an old victrola, and they bought him a small 7-inch record player. In recent years, Puciato revealed that he grew up in a dangerous, poor neighborhood, which "giant[ly]" influenced him in the sense that he does not "feel uncomfortable in any area," while the African-American culture of the area led to his fondness for R&B and hip-hop. Around the age of nine, he saw Metallica's video for "One", which was the "darkest thing [he had watched]" and inspired him to learn Metallica songs on the guitar. When recalling the appearance of these or other artists such as Nine Inch Nails on TV, he viewed it as "inspiring" and said it "seemed like the weirdos had infiltrated the system, or created a new one." Puciato had several older friends who traded tapes and they would introduce him to underground music; when Puciato told one of them which were his favorites bands, his friend gave him a tape of I Against I by Bad Brains that "blew [his] mind apart" and subsequently showed him a 1980s' Bad Brains live bootleg that would make a long-standing impression on the singer. In 2013 he reflected:

Puciato recorded his first cassette at thirteen, performing original music with his best friend who was a drummer. At the age of fourteen, Puciato started singing for a thrash metal group. While originally their guitarist, he switched to vocals because he was "too much of a control freak to let someone else sing" and could not perform both at the same time, but he continued writing the band's songs on guitar. After people started praising his singing ability and Puciato realized that it came more naturally to him, he shifted his focus to vocals.

Although raised in a non-practicing home, Puciato attended a Catholic private school. He was a good student and skipped grades, graduating one month after he turned 17. He went to college in Maryland and after a year of studying he took a break, during which he was invited to join the Dillinger Escape Plan. Puciato had already played in some bands from the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, but, at that time, he preferred to refine his vocal style than commit full-time to a band, and waited for the "right opportunity" to do so. In a scenario mirroring that of young Henry Rollins and Black Flag, Puciato started out as a fan of the Dillinger Escape Plan in their earlier days. When the band split with their singer Dimitri Minakakis (due to him wanting to focus more on his graphic design career and personal life), they searched publicly for a new singer by releasing the instrumental version of the song "43% Burnt" (off of their debut album). Puciato sent in a tape with one version of him mimicking Dimitri Minakakis and one with his own take on the song. He was contacted shortly after by the band, auditioned in person, and was subsequently asked to join. Coincidentally, the band's first release with Puciato was for a Black Flag tribute compilation, where they covered "Damaged I and II". Commenting on his entrance to the band in 2013, Puciato recalled: Puciato follows the same approach in writing for the Black Queen, characterized by moody synths and electronics, and the Dillinger Escape Plan, featuring dissonant, complex rhythms and abrupt changes, despite the stylistic disparity of both bands. He tends to seek the "big picture" of his pieces under development instead of going through them detail by detail; the latter is a common procedure used by some of his musical partners and Puciato believes that both methods balance out the "flipside of their [respective] strengths". putting as much emphasis on the patterns and melodies of the songs as on their lyrics, and discarding those which "mean nothing" to him. PopMatters described Puciato as a "brilliant storyteller, always bringing the listener into the atmosphere of the song", and his lines "wash over you like an emotion — maybe you can't pinpoint its exact meaning or origin, but you know it's there", opined MetalSucks. but he tries to "give their [emotional] source to the listener without it becoming too indecipherable or compromised along the way [of creating the music]."

Stage performances by Puciato, particularly as a member of the Dillinger Escape Plan, were noted for their reckless, chaotic nature. The band was already known for its shows, but the addition of the singer in 2001 led to their most infamous performances. The concerts caused him both cumulative and direct injuries, and a news site commented in 2013: "Thankfully, Mr. Puciato has not, as of this writing, actually killed himself while [performing]". and started to light their drums on fire, to run rapidly from the stage onto the heads of the crowd, or to climb through them, as well as invited the audiences to the stage.

When asked about his rehearsal schedule, Puciato said that the performances are "completely improvised. I just want to be as pure and in the moment as possible vocally and physically... to me it's about trying to transcend and reach the purest part of the moment and live in that completely for the whole performance." Puciato later resented that several fans were "frightened" of him due to their perception of him. A few shows afterward, Puciato's face was hit by a guitar, shattering a tooth and requiring emergency dentistry. During a 2002 show supporting System of a Down in Europe, audience members taunted the band and hurled chicken at them, which the singer picked up and ate. unaware that the undertow could have pulled him deep beneath the surface and consequently drowned him. The act caused much controversy and had the Dillinger Escape Plan on the verge of being banned in the UK. Upon returning to Reading in 2016, Puciato played the opening song "Prancer" sitting on an onstage couch reading a newspaper and drinking tea.

On June 10, 2006, the Dillinger Escape Plan played in Fredericksburg, Virginia in front of a hostile audience and a spectator stole James Love's guitar, leading Puciato to chase him from the stage to the parking lot where the robber got into his car, ran over the singer's foot and a member of Cattle Decapitation tossed a hammer through his windshield, yet he managed to flee.

At the Los Angeles House of Blues, opening for Cavalera Conspiracy in 2008, Puciato jumped into the VIP section and threw a chair to a security guard who was "roughing up" a fan, giving rise to a near-riot, the audience beginning to throw objects and the other guards trying to drag the singer off the stage for the rest of their set. The event ended up with six police cars arriving at the place

Views on the music industry

I think if you have something you care about it's best to be as hands-on as possible with every aspect of it ... [Some people] say, "Ah I just don't give a fuck..." as if that apathy and nonchalance is something to be proud of. There are some things you shouldn't care about at all, but when it comes to what you are putting out into the world, you should give all of the fucks. ... [By doing this] you end up spending an eternity obsessing over every detail, on the creative end and the release end, which is all fine by me. We enjoy it. — Puciato on self-managing most of the aspects of his bands, 2016

The singer is opposed to illegal downloading, especially concerning underground artists who struggle to maintain a career, and he emphasizes that the convenience of buying music through Internet has left "no excuse for bankrupting a scene or band you're into anymore." The 2010 Dillinger Escape Plan song "Good Neighbor" deals with this topic. As a consequence he has refused to launch crowdfunding campaigns, e.g. via Kickstarter or other platforms, for any of his projects, believing that doing so is creatively and morally "weak."

Personal life, public perception and controversies Puciato moved to Los Angeles, California around 2009. He cited his discomfort with the cold weather of the American East Coast as the main reason.

Puciato is a voracious reader and has taken several online courses at California State University, Long Beach amidst his career, including classes on psychology, sociology and economy. Puciato started working out at fifteen because he saw it as a healthy hobby besides music and "just kept going with ... [because] it kinda kept me out of a lot of trouble - I mean, I don't really drink or do drugs or anything like that. So it's like what else do you do?" In a 2010 interview with ESPN, Puciato revealed that he had considered becoming a professional bodybuilder, but ultimately changed his mind because of his dissatisfaction with that industry. After this surfaced, the singer expressed uneasiness yet thought that it was "somewhat unavoidable" due to their public profiles at the time.

In 2013, the singer was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and subsequently treated it. Puciato was relieved to have finally identified it because, until then, he did not understand several of his personal traits such as hyperfocus and a deficiency in short-term memory when performing music-related activities, as well as a distortion in time perception. In an extensive 2018 interview with Kerrang!, Puciato opened up about his inner struggles with the intention of helping people who are going through similar situations. and was later jailed amidst a Dillinger tour due to forgetting to pay a fine.

On July 23, 2010, Puciato's death was faked by bandmates Ben Weinman and Liam Wilson, when they posted on their Twitter accounts that the singer had passed in his sleep. Shortly after their Warped Tour set on that day, Every Time I Die vocalist Keith Buckley debunked the rumor, tweeting, "If Greg Puciato is dead, then his corpse just played a great set on mainstage today."

In January 2012, the singer ended up with the assistance of emergency units after ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms mixed with other substances, which had caused what he described as "something in between a near-death experience and a near-out-of-body experience."

In early 2015, all of Puciato's personal belongings were stolen while he was relocating to a new place.

Statements and beliefs In addition to his music and stage shows, Puciato is known for his outspokenness. Several of his statements on social media and interviews became headlines.

Puciato has expressed more affinity for the progressive-leaning ethics of punk and hardcore than those of heavy metal. and has been consistently supportive of LGBT rights, criticizing homophobia in heavy metal subculture, releasing a shirt in support of LGBT rights with the Dillinger Escape Plan, and also debuting a video from the Black Queen on Out magazine website.

In 2018, Puciato explained that he has a "really big gag reflex" for artists who are not genuine with their audiences or who compromise themselves to profit. and Jared Leto of Thirty Seconds to Mars, referring to the latter's transition from actor to rock musician as a "revolting shtick" and said that he "makes Fred Durst seem like Jim Morrison." His diatribes against Leto and Fall Out Boy came about after he discovered that they would headline festivals in which Slayer and the Melvins, According to Puciato, he began making negative remarks about the band following the 2003 Take Action Tour, where Avenged Sevenfold supported the Dillinger Escape Plan, in which, as stated by him, their members took in provisions from Dillinger's catering table without asking them or introducing themselves. He also named Discordance Axis' The Inalienable Dreamless "probably my favorite grindcore album of all time", expressed admiration for Neurosis,

In a 2013 interview, Puciato said that he does not "have a filter" on his statements, live performances and songs' lyrics, and in the past he thought that this "was a plus". He claims that this led his social media to become a "distraction" and distorted their original intention, which was to have a closer relationship with his fans. Eventually, he closed them all in late 2012, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. A 2009 list made by the head director and editors of Roadrunner Records included Puciato among the "50 Greatest Metal Frontmen of All Time" (excluding artists from Roadrunner). In 2013 he was named number one by MetalSucks in their listing of "top 25 modern metal frontmen". The site proclaimed: "[Puciato] is the personification of talent and anger and sadness and fuck-youness that draws people to metal and hardcore in the first place. There'll never be another just like him. He is the only one." In 2015, Uproxx ranked him at No. 17 on "The 20 Most Dynamic, Chaotic, Entertaining Frontmen and Frontwomen of All-Time". In 2018, Loudwire placed him 9th in their listing of the "Top 30 frontmen + frontwomen of the 21st century".

Several authors have named Puciato among the greatest harsh vocalists in hardcore punk and metal, one of the best contemporary vocalists in popular music, as well as one of the most versatile singers in rock.

The Bled frontman James Muñoz said that he "wanted to quit singing" after listening to Option Paralysis, "but that always happens when [he] listens to [the Dillinger Escape Plan] albums." Some musicians have also praised Puciato after collaborating with him: Max Cavalera from Sepultura said that their joint composition of Soulfly's "Rise of the Fallen" made it "one of the most exciting songs I've been part of in my career" Upon hearing the vocals that Puciato recorded for his song "The Mighty Masturbator", Devin Townsend remarked: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Greg Puciato just tore me a new asshole. Fucking hell... AWESOME!"

Discography Solo Child Soldier: Creator of God (2020) Mirrorcell (2022) FC5N - EP (2024)

With the Dillinger Escape Plan

Miss Machine (2004) Ire Works (2007) Option Paralysis (2010) One of Us Is the Killer (2013) Dissociation (2016)

With Spylacopa Spylacopa (2008)

With Killer Be Killed Killer Be Killed (2014) Reluctant Hero (2020)

With the Black Queen

Fever Daydream (2016) Infinite Games (2018)

With Better Lovers God Made Me An Animal (2023, EP) Highly Irresponsible (2024, LP)

Guest work

Remixes Year Artist Release Additional information Source 2009ProngPower of the Damn Mixxxer Remixed "Bad Fall"