Dance Gavin Dance’s Tilian Pearson was named after a character in a Tolkien novel, apparently

Dance Gavin Dance, one of the hardest-working bands in alternative music, have certainly had a banner 2020. Despite tours getting canceled (including their own), the post-hardcore band have emerged with Afterburner – arguably their most successful album to date. Averaging an album release almost every 18 months since their 2006 debut EP dropped, you’d think the band might be musically fatigued, but this couldn’t be more false. With around a million monthly listeners on Spotify alone, the band’s discography now sees both one billion streams across all platforms as well as over a million albums sold total – no small thing for a band in their genre.

Armed with vocalist Tilian Pearson, the band’s last few records have seen the band grow more and more with each release – even gaining airtime on XM Octane’s “Test Drive”. So it’s rather interesting to find out that, at least according to Tilian, his name came from a very famous J.R.R. Tolkien novel.

Apparently, Tilian’s name comes from the name “Tilion”, a class of Maiar beings in J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous novel, The Silmarillion. In fact, the beings are often compared to angels. Certainly, it’s a pretty neat factoid for those who may not have known previously.

Can confirm, source: dad pic.twitter.com/l8a5X9RVpO

— Tilian (@tilianpearson) November 30, 2020

On another note, the Dance Gavin Dance Facebook group is hosting a 20-ticket giveaway for the band’s livestream, so if you’re really into that idea (you should be), join the group for more details.