Gregory John Puciato (born March 27, 1980) is an American musician best known as the former lead vocalist and lyricist of the metalcore 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 performs alongside Jerry Cantrell providing backup vocals and lead vocals on Layne Staley-sung songs for Cantrell's solo tours. 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