ALBUM REVIEW: Afterburner – Dance Gavin Dance

DANCE GAVIN DANCE are storming into 2020 with their eight-studio album Afterburner, a creative endeavour into the California band’s ability to grow and evolve that goes beyond cementing their sound and offers a window into what the next and third decade of the band’s career could look like, which doesn’t look too bad.

Kicking off with their opening track Prisoner, one of the album’s overarching qualities is the vivacity and sheer sassiness of the songs. Prisoner‘s electrifying guitar riffs bounce across the track, juxtaposing its light, boisterous instrumentals with Jon Mess’ ruthlessly gritty vocals that give their sound a dark cutting edge. One In A Million, Parody Catharsis and Three Wishes follow the same nature and are just so rambunctiously energetic but cut with some gnarly unclean vocals from Mess that you’re not sure whether to dive headfirst into a mosh pit or pop and lock.

Vocal capabilities are put to the test with this album and do not disappoint, arguably make this album one of their best for the vocals alone. As expected Tilian Pearson‘s vocals beautifully mix with the tracks, offering from some truly angelic moments during his high peaks in Night Sway, Nothing Shameful, and Prisoner. Mess does not hold back when delivering some solid unclean vocals and when listening to this album it does bring vague callbacks to the 2010-2014 era of metalcore and post-hardcore. Not to fall into the generic trap of comparisons, but many of the tracks on this album loosely reminiscence to early 2010 ISSUES, MEMPHIS MAY FIRE, or CROWN THE EMPIRE in their juxtaposition between clean and unclean vocals.

Reflecting briefly for a moment on the past, though they’ve secured almost a decade together with a clearcut lineup it’s inevitable that fans will naturally reflect on their previous work and the framework left by previous members. In their 2013 Acceptance Speech and even bleeding into their 2015 Instant Gratification, it was felt that the band was pushing forward in an uphill battle to prove themselves to their fanbase and cement their own sound with their new members. From the success of 2016’s Mothership and now beyond that, their later works such as 2020’s Afterburner feels like a breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief. Without the painstaking efforts to prove themselves, the band now have a space to experiment and be versatile in what they create. Perhaps that might be where some of the high praise for this album comes from because in comparison to their earlier works in previous decades this is automatically better.

Still, the versatility is exactly what this album is; a creative playground that pushes the boundaries for what can be achieved in terms of sound and genre for a band typically gatekept as emo or post-hardcore. We see this in the drastic contrast between the eccentric tracks like Parody Catharsis, the unexpectedly soulful tracks Into The Sunset and Strawberry’s Wake that call for an emotional and sombre moment, then leaping back into Born To Fail, Say Hi and Night Sway that is intoxicatingly riff-heavy and border the lines of metal and metalcore in their melodic instrumentals.

Calenmiento Global deserves its own talking point and is becoming the most favourable track amongst fans. The feisty track features both English and Spanish lyrics that are executed flawlessly by Pearson. DANCE GAVIN DANCE set a precedent for alternative music, illustrating that you can incorporate other cultures and languages into your music without it playing to the typical tropes or clichés and without it directly being cultural appropriation.

On that note, in the era of cancel culture, it’s important to nip this in the bud before it inevitably crops up in a Twitter tirade. On the track Into The Sunset part-African American guitarist, Will Swan drops the n-word in his own verse. Some might think to criticise the band for doing this whilst knowing non-black fans consume their music, however, consider that the track itself is a collaborative effort that offers a space for each musician featuring on it to have their own verse to express their feelings and experiences through lyrics. It would be more problematic to censor black musicians and their experiences for the benefit of their non-black audience members and rather it is the responsibility of non-black people who consume that music to not say that word.

In these nihilistic times, it seems like an obvious fit for bands to write very blatantly about social-political issues. This album strays away from the obvious doom and gloom at the moment, offering calamity instead. Some albums serve an artistic purpose, whether that be political or conceptual, but put simply; this is just good music to enjoy and forget what’s going on in the world. A great follow up from their 2018 Artificial Selection and overall an exciting prospect at what the future might hold for the band.

Rating: 9/10

Afterburner is out now via Rise Records.

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