Sacramento post-hardcore kings Dance Gavin Dance have been teasing us with details about their eighth album since last year, and fans are going stir crazy, including us. So, we couldn’t resist popping along to their London show during their co-headline run across the UK with Veil Of Maya.

We meandered backstage before the band’s show that evening to speak with founding member and guitarist Will Swan about the tour, but even more importantly some questions about one of 2018’s most anticipated releases, ‘Artificial Selection’.

DP!: Welcome to the UK! How’s the tour going so far?

W: It’s been a lot of fun. It’s a bit cold here, a lot colder than we expected when we booked the tour, but it definitely hasn’t got in the way of it being fun and the shows being great. We flew here in the snow storms that you had. It was messed up!

DP!: You’ve brought the Veil Of Maya guys out with you, are there any other bands you think we should be checking out?

W: All kinds of bands. I have my own record label called Blue Swan Records, and I sign any unsigned bands that I like, so anyone who wants to check out some new cool bands should head to the website or our socials. There’s Eidola, Sianvar… we’ve had Hail The Sun and Stolas too, who are both now on Equal Vision Records. It’s that sort of style: post-hardcore. Some people have even dubbed it Swancore, but I didn’t call it that, haha.

DP!: So, turns out you’re going to be touring with the mighty Underoath next year. Excited?

W: Yes! It should be awesome. We’ve played some shows on Vans Warped Tour with them before, but not an actual tour, so it’s gonna be sweet.

DP!: If you could tour with anyone, who would it be?

W: …The Blood Brothers. If they could do a reunion tour, just to play with us, haha. I just love them. I love that whole era, like Thursday and At The Drive-In. I’m still obsessed with that. I’m ready for the revival of that.

DP!: So, Tilian posted on Instagram last year that the new album ‘Artificial Selection’ is finished. What was the writing process for that like?

W: Yes, it is all done. It was tough. We did Vans Warped Tour last year, and we decided we were going to put out a single for it, so we wrote a bunch of songs and we chose one of them, ‘Summertime Gladness’, and a lot of the songs on the new record are from that writing session. It’s kind of all over the place, because I was thinking, “Singles! Just think of all the different styles, and just make a catchier song in that style!”, so I feel like this record is pretty diverse. It’s my favourite one so far.

DP!: Sounds promising! Is it a follow-on from ‘Mothership’, or more of a departure?

W: It’s… both! We wanted to think about what we’ve done before, and elaborate on that, and continue that, but also to do things that we’ve never done. I feel like we did a good job on this record of touching both of those bases.

DP!: We can’t wait! Please tell us it’s on the way soon?

W: Yeah. Hopefully we can drop some stuff soon. We’re already done with it, and we’ve shot the first music video, so it’s just kind of getting everything in place now with post-production, and then we’ll have it out there.

The band’s eighth full-length album, ‘Artificial Selection’, is out on June 8th 2018 through Rise Records.

You can purchase it online from the band’s webstore (here).

You can keep up to date with the band online by following them on Facebook (here), Twitter (here), and Instagram (here).

Interview by Lottie Cook (@pixelottie)