Afterburner
Dance Gavin Dance has been the talk of the scene in 2020. With new record Afterburner being released digitally in April and physically as of the 10th, the band also recently played a digital show to ring in the physical release, to much acclaim. Today, I got the chance to interview drummer Matt Mingus, a member who’s been with the band from the start.
Twitch has announced some pretty rough new guidelines to playing music within streams, severely-restricting content creators from using any music that they don’t own. Essentially, if you didn’t make it yourself, your stream is at risk of getting taken down.
While this will severely hinder future streams across the board, there is good news in the response of some of our favorite labels. In a Twitter thread that posed the question to several labels, Pure Noise Records, Rise Records, UNFD, and Fearless Records stated that they have no issue if a streamer uses music from their label.
Dance Gavin Dance, 2020
The time has come for me to write my first review for my favorite band, Dance Gavin Dance. As someone who has listened to the band religiously for over a decade, I have seen them flourish with a consistent line-up for the past six years. The combination of soaring clean vocalist Tilian Pearson, innovative guitarist Will Swan, chaotic unclean vocalist Jon Mess, groovy bassist Tim Feerick, and grounded drummer Matt Mingus have persisted and created four cohesive albums together that are devoid of filler and full of memorable moments. My expectations are grand for the band’s ninth album, Afterburner, so let’s dive right in!
“Prisoner” was the album-announcement single and kicks off Afterburner. From the first measure, a complex dual-guitar riff immediately throws off first-time listeners. It’s still hard to wrap my head around the progression of these triplets, but that’s what we get with Swancore staple Sergio Medina working with Will on this song. Exploring the topics of religion and its subsequent confinement, the profoundness of the lyricism takes hold from the get-go. My favorite part of this song is the first post-chorus where all we can hear is yet another one of Will’s patented funk riffs that’s hard not to jive to. I distinctly remember being in my workplace when it dropped early in the morning February 22nd, dancing along at my standing desk and feeling on top of the world with this groovy piece.
The time has come to feast your eyes and ears on another quality song from post-hardcore legends Dance Gavin Dance in the form of their latest single, “Lyrics Lie.”
Today, the band released a video for the song documenting the creation of the Afterburner mural in Sacramento, California, to hype up the release of the band’s ninth studio album ahead of its release on April 24th.
This track is beyond phenomenal. From Will Swan’s unreal riffage from the start, to Tilian flexing his unclean vocals in the post-chorus in a trade-off with Jon Mess, to the chorus that I simply cannot get out of my head, this track is an immediate top-5 in the band’s long discography. My excitement for the band’s latest release has grown immensely with this new song and I cannot wait to get my hands on Afterburner!
