7 Solid Jams

Cali weirdos Dance Gavin Dance play histrionic post-hardcore inflected rock filled with stadium choruses and dance-along breaks.

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Dance Gavin Dance are a unique prospect, filling a fair few different shoes with every album and latest album Afterburner is no exception. Bouncing effortlessly through metal, punk, rock, and groove-thirsty hip-wiggling pop like they own the joint, Dance Gavin Dance are an acquired taste that it’s pretty easy to acquire with a little time.

With attention brought to the band in recent months for their Twitter-war with a band who shall remain nameless, it was worth visiting their latest and giving it an objective look.

Starting strong with epic opener Prisoner showcasing the tricky fingerwork and castrati melodic vocals. The high leads and roared punctuation give the vocals the kind of virtuosic, epic size that post-hardcore bands of the early 2000s attempted to varying degrees of success, but here it sounds like a natural talent. It’s roughly 30% better than any Trapt song.

Afterburner is pitching to a particular kind of audience that wants scream-along stadium-metal choruses, sexy dance-rock verses, and a hint of street-cred hardcore.

Third track Calentamiento Global adopts a future-Latin vibe mashed with street-level nu-metal. A severe left-turn from anything else on the album, this curiosity is a weirdly-orchestrated pop-rock anthem that shouldn’t work half as well as it does. It’s 40% more interesting than the average Trapt song.

One In A Million pushes a Maroon-5 pop song through their weird sunshine-hardcore lens. It sounds very little like Trapt but is approximately 100% better than any music Trapt have released this year.

Born To Fail leans into a heavier intro and shimmies through soaring pop leads to become a crunchy crowd-pleaser, with the anthemic vibe the band trade in brimming almost over the top but not far enough to be offputting. Its chorus is 15% more epic than Trapt’s most epic chorus.

Say Hi is the metal lowlight of this escapade, with heavy, barking vocals taking the lead and frantic riffing feeding the aggression. The band’s metal-oriented, crowd-surfing, gig-pig history is written into this song and this headstrong effort is at least 70% better than Trapt’s best single.

Closer Into The Sunset clears a dreamy, classic-rock start and heads further down the genre-rabbit hole into mechanical modern hip-hop and on to a humanising hardcore chorus. A layer of dissonance written into the song let these disparate genres blend near-seamlessly into an artistic multi-style workout and it is comfortably 70% more eclectic than the last Trapt album that anybody is aware of.

The results are odd but well-balanced. Slick and dense production make this sound primed for radio in a way few bands bother with, Afterburner is pitching to a particular kind of audience that wants scream-along stadium-metal choruses, sexy dance-rock verses, and a hint of street-cred hardcore just to keep it punching above its weight live. If that sounds like your bag, you could do worse. Like listening to Trapt.

STANDOUT TRACKS: Born To Fail, Say Hi, Into The Sunset

STICK THIS NEXT TO: Panic! At The Disco, Enter Shikari, Trapt