Review Summary: No
Much of the discourse surrounding Dance Gavin Dance revolves around their singer Tilian’s rather annoying voice. While it is true that his voice is an acquired taste to say the least, he is not solely to blame for the state the band finds itself in for
Afterburner.Tracks from
Instant Gratification and even
Acceptance Speech have proven that the band can write compelling songs despite how god awful Tillian can sound at his worst, and I would be lying if I were to say he never had his moments. Apart from the absolutely unnecessary and obnoxious Spanish on “Calentamiento Global”, Tilian is Tilian for better or for worse. The issue with their latest two albums seems to be how comfortable they sound, and how they seem like they’ve run out of compelling new ideas.
Almost every song feels like a rehashed old idea, or an idea being slightly re-contextualized. Throughout
Afterburner there’s this persistent feeling that we’ve heard this before, even if it’s hard to pinpoint where exactly. It all blends together. Will Swan is a fantastic guitarist, and every unnecessarily technical guitar riff sounds like your garden variety Dance Gavin Dance noodling. A significant amount of the guitar playing found here feels so arbitrary and meaningless. So much of the guitar playing here feels excessively technical for the sake of it; “Lyrics Lie” feels as if Will knows he should be playing a certain way but the end result ultimately lacks purpose. Once and awhile he stumbles on something genuinely catchy and compelling until the song moves on to more mind numbing guitar playing. “Parody Catharsis” has a really groovy and fun section featuring the best vocal performance from Swan in any Dance Gavin Dance album, but moments that immediately follow include unnecessary lead guitars that add nothing of value to the song. These guitar lines could have very well have been randomly added for all they add to the track. “Born to Fail'' has a similar issue with a completely unneeded lead guitar during the verses that doesn't add anything significant to the song.
Some of the most enjoyable bits of
Afterburner come from the groovier “funk” inspired parts, because Will has to slow down, and actually craft something that is specifically compelling, rather than his usual autopilot playing. The aforementioned tracks “Calentamiento Global” “Parody Catharsis”, and the song “Three Wishes” all have this in common, yet even though these are easily some of the best tracks from the album, they all have their uninspired moments to stifle the interesting ones.
This seems to be the issue with this band as a whole now.
Afterburner is not devoid of interesting moments, ideas, or performances. Both vocalists and the instrumental performances have their time to shine. Apart from the Spanish,“Calentamiento Global” is a groovy song and one of the most enjoyable, but even that track suffers from excessive guitar playing. The band seems to be incapable of translating these ideas into a fully enjoyable song. They need to fall back on their old tropes, with Jon screaming nonsense after a groove-centric part with Tilian because that’s what a Dance Gavin Song is, right?
It’s a common argument that the band’s tumultuous early days bred distinct albums that still felt like Dance Gavin Dance no matter who was singing or any other line up changes they had. Songs can be instantly recognized from each album based on songwriting alone. It is easy to blame Tilian for being the dumpster fire of a singer he is but in reality it isn’t his fault, as Dance Gavin Dance had entered a state of complacency and it shows in a really ugly way on
Afterburner.
