Looking to cover all their musical influences and both Minakakis and Patton's ranges, the band hired Greg Puciato, whose vocal delivery spans styles from screaming to crooning, and he was encouraged to sing by the other members. While maintaining their original style, on 2004's "Miss Machine" they incorporated more melody, industrial influences and strings, as well as two songs that were not initially composed for Dillinger nor in their usual style to "not be pigeonholed". Their next release, "Ire Works", featured more sounds ranging from "glitchy electropop" to Latin jazz, an increasing use of programming and instruments such as horns and piano. 2010's "Option Paralysis" has more piano, vocal harmonies and on this album the band "learned how to merge these new elements" within the songs rather than separating them from song to song, as Puciato stated. He referred to its follow-up, "One of Us Is the Killer", as a continuation of this and it was the first since "Calculating Infinity" were they composed all the music during its songwriting process. Scott A. Gray of "Exclaim!" stated: "The tightness, the focus of ["One of Us Is the Killer"], was ludicrous, seemingly taken as far as it could go". On the contrary, "Dissociation" drew from all their different inspirations but mostly from song to song, including, for example, long instrumental sections of IDM and jazz fusion, and some parts were composed many years before its recording.