DANCE GAVIN DANCE

RISE

Afterburner

It’s not often a band’s ninth album has them hit strides as breathtaking or bold as Dance Gavin Dance have with

Afterburner. But the Sacramento memecore scorchers seem endlessly inspired, and between the summery Latin flavours of “Calentamiento Global”, breakneck-paced calamity of “Say Hi” and slinky funk edge of “Strawberry’s Wake”, they’ve funnelled a brain-burstingly hefty wealth of that inspiration into their craft. And though all the quintessential archetypes of a DGD record are present – the noodly, pseudo-mathy guitar passages; the dips and dives between shoegazesque airiness and deathcorish brutality; the oftentimes downright hilarious one-liners from screamer Jon Mess – Afterburner is daringly experimental, with much of the band’s sharpest writing to date and near-incalculable replay value.