“New and always sunny / Do you taste the honey?”
Few bands have so frequently turned turmoil into sonic triumph as Dance Gavin Dance. The Sacramento post-hardcore staples have, over the years, been as synonymous with lineup changes and drama as they have been associated with their signature “Swancore” sound.
After an extended period of relative stability, the tragic passing of longtime bassist Tim Feerick, and the controversial departure of clean vocalist Tilian Pearson thrust the band once again into uncertainty. Rather than an extended search for a new vocalist, DGD turned inward and drafted longtime rhythm guitarist Andrew Wells to take over on clean vocals.
The resulting album, Pantheon, largely succeeds in kickstarting an exciting new era of Dance Gavin Dance. With Wells as frontman, the band feels rejuvenated as sonic risk-takers, delivering many of their biggest swings in years – even if they are still occasionally grounded by reliance on songwriting formulas.
Opening track “Animal Surgery” begins with a slow fade-in before exploding into a signature cacophony of progressive riffs. Less typical is the song’s hook, paring back DGD’s sonic assault for an addictive earworm that feels more akin to an easycore chorus from the late 2000s than typical Swancore fare. “I got a feeling that you never gave a damn,” Wells belts, in one of many potshots the album seems to take at ex-vocalist Pearson, some more specific than others.
Overall, Pantheon shines the brightest when it is willing to take calculated deviations from DGD’s signature sound. Wells proves to be more than capable of filling the shoes of the clean singer role, adeptly balancing the band’s penchant for sugary hooks with stabs at greater thematic depth, at times bringing over themes of faith and humanity’s struggle from the more conceptual work of his band Eidola.
The rest of the band largely rises to the occasion, with unclean vocalist Jon Mess in particular showing a greater dynamic range on Pantheon than on any previous album. Mess has grown tremendously as a vocalist since the early days of Dance Gavin Dance, now able to turn from blistering metalcore-influenced screams to sections of outright clean vocals on standout track “A Shoulder to Cry On”, all while keeping the tone of whimsical nonsense that has endeared him to the band’s fanbase for nearly two decades.
While Pantheon is at times a more serious record tonally, DGD still keep playfulness at the core of their sound, with “Space Cow Initiation Ritual” taking a downright strange dive into deep funk grooves and vocoder effects, feeling like an alternate universe, acid trip version of fan favourite album Happiness. The song features the album’s lone guest vocal appearance, with funk music icon George Clinton getting in on the groove, boasting a playfulness that is practically miraculous coming from a man who is now in his seventh decade of making music.
The aforementioned “A Shoulder to Cry On” pushes the album’s experimentation in a polar opposite direction, opening with a pummelling metalcore groove before settling on a sinister tone for the verses, and finally building to a downright progressive layered bridge section, bemoaning the current state of a disinformation-ridden world while guitarist Will Swan’s work feels more indebted to Coheed and Cambria than it does to DGD’s usual palette of influences. It is a genuinely thrilling high point for this new era of the band, one of several moments where they seem to be tapping genuinely fresh inspiration after several albums of relative stagnation.
Unfortunately, Wells’ influence cannot completely break Dance Gavin Dance out of its recent complacency. There are still several points on Pantheon where the band seems to frustratingly fall back into “autopilot”, with instrumental sections that feel like Swan could’ve written them in his sleep. While this may somewhat be a symptom of the limitations of artistic reinvention from a band that is now on their eleventh album – and has covered much sonic ground in that time – it does also feel at times like the band hedging their bets, hesitant to take too much of a step into new waters at once without keeping the other foot in familiar territory.
Still, Pantheon is a bigger risk than Dance Gavin Dance has taken since their early albums, and that alone is worth commending. Wells has injected a fresh dose of authenticity and passion into one of modern post-hardcore’s most recognizable acts, and as “Descend to Chaos” brings the album to a sinister conclusion, the listener is left with the hope that DGD can continue to build upon the album’s adventurous spirit and push their artistry into a truly new era with their next releases.
7.5/10
Pantheon releases on September 12 via Rise Records and can be pre-ordered here.