People You Know wins as Jon Mess’ best vocal performance with Nicotine Armoire being just shy of first place. It was a tight race so I placed the communities top 10 Jon Mess songs below

People You Know
Burning Down the Nicotine Armoire
Carve
Yikes!
Say Hi
Man of the Year
Petting Zoo Justice 
Synergy 
Moon
Head Hunter

From their Amsterdam show

I’m calling it done, I did omit the city below tho 👎 I have so much respect for the artist the did the most recent poster for this year’s tour, trees are so complicated and this one being made of wires only exacerbates that. I’m excited for my bf to get home n see it ❤️

This is my 2nd cat video I've done for a DGD song, hope y'all enjoy. I've had this one running through my head for a while now.

I miss the nice album art WITH color. When will we get it back?

Happiness sweeps as our communities vote for Best Album Art. There were honestly no wrong Answers but our top 5 albums covers were
1: Happiness
2: Mothership
3: Artificial Selection
4: Tree City Sessions II
5: Pantheon

[intro]
Well i cant exactly claim to be the biggest DGD fan of all time who knows everything...
or gets involved in the news, the history or the controversies and when i do find out about them I'm usually 4 years late, so nothing is ever relevant to me...

but for whatever reason i felt compelled and the need to write this all out and say it, almost as a memoir', a piece of history left behind in my own life to let: DGD, you the reader, and anyone else in the dystopian future, KNOW. that i existed, lived and enjoyed some art this one time while i was alive.

so i sat down and wrote this, i hope you enjoy.

--------------------------------------------

Dance Gavin Dance

Every couple of years in my life I will suddenly for no reason just slide back into a dance Gavin Dance song randomly,

And there I am again... I almost start over the entire discography front to back, forgetting how much I even knew about this band,

Now I'm not like overly obsessed with this one single band I wouldn't even call them my favorite.

But for some odd reason I keep coming back to it every couple of years for several months at a time.

And I simply cannot put it down. it echoes in my head over and over.

But the biggest question is: what even is it?
Is it hardcore, post hardcore, metal-core?
math rock? folk rock? progressive? experimental?
Is it funk? is it swing? is it jazz?
There are a lot of harsh vocals so it has to be metal right?
Not even close.
But what about all the clean vocals? Are there any?
Not only is this answer yes, an astounding YES

But just about everybody from the scene agrees that the clean vocalist' in this band are some of the greatest clean vocalist to ever sing -ever-

And it's very easy to see why; some of their range and their tune is just so absolutely unmatched.

That even when these vocalists are inside of another band they are good but they don't seem to hit the higher echelons of what they were actually capable of [like they were inside of dgd]

Something about the erratic array of switching between so many genres inside of such a small time frame inside of every single song...

Really forces every single instrument in the band to have a highlight and a shining piece, constant moments where they have to go their hardest, and be as complicated and creative as music seems to even allow.

But also every single instrument also seems to have slowness and delays allowing for a highlight for another instrument, when the drums begin to slow the guitar begins to pick up when the guitar goes into a groovy slower riff, The Bass guitar just comes out of no where and takes the stage when it does entire Funk solo, and not just a cheap, quick and choppy one either...

Their EP all the way back in 2006 did something very creative that no other band really had done before. it created a unique sound that made them stand out which largely was just the fact that they had clean vocals stacked on top of harsh vocals.

Two lines of lyrics rolling at the same time.

It seems like it would sound like two people talking over each other but in reality the harsh vocals function like an instrument, which really allowed the cleans to stand out in a way that, 'not only had no one ever heard before' but the severity and the hit of those clean vocals really gave them a sound that was beyond unique.

I can't seem to describe it well enough; it Almost Doesn't Matter What song you pick, every single one has a layout that's exactly like this but the layout is re-arranged in a way that's completely unlike the song that was before it.

They have 10 songs known as the robot with the human hair Saga, a bizarre story about a robot with the human hair that can't tell if he's human or if he's robot he's attacked by a vicious robotic dog with a giant Mech who is attempting to destroy the entire planet and his girlfriend, not to mention his sidekick the duck.

It's not a story that makes sense in a single song, it's really not even a story that makes sense AT ALL!? and thats not really the important part...

Every iteration of this story has an in-Life representation, when a character dies maybe it was a band member that died, maybe it was a love interest that fell apart, maybe it was Acquisitions and turmoil against a band member.

-

But all of these random lyrics actually end up making a cohesive story but only if you are capable of rearranging the pieces which are not presented to you chronologically.

Since 2006 this band has pushed out 12 fucking albums. with ~15 songs per album.

over 180 songs

540 min of play time which is around 9 hours of constant consistent creativity.

It has to be their loyalty... right?? A band that has stuck together like this is the only kind of band that could stay together and be as popular as they are for as long as they have... Right?

Not only do they NOT stick together; almost every single instrument has had multiple different people playing them, and somehow throughout all of these years and the controversies that this band has had... they somehow managed to not only stay together as one singular Enterprise, but there is also a huge amount of controversy between almost all of these members, an amount of controversy that would send any other band to the bottom of the ocean, and yet it has somehow sent Dance Gavin Dance to the peaks of the Moon.

I don't have a favorite song I don't have a favorite album I don't have a favorite lyric! - the entirety of everything they do is so obscure, so strange, so abstract, even just looking at the lyrics in-and-of themselves are so completely random, that every single word, every single scream, every new guitar line, every new funk riff, is like a strange Miss-shaped piece of a puzzle and the intent was never ever to put the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that allows you to look at a single image, it was almost meant to be interpreted only into abstract, to abstractly tape the pieces of the puzzle together yourself until it makes its own piece of art... one that only you yourself can even make sense of.

I don't know the band members by name. I'm not obsessed with everything they do in their day-to-day lives, I'm not aware of where they are touring and I only saw them live once from a distance when i was young and cared less, which i regret, but my point is to say that I'm not an obsessive fan.

Every single vocalist of this band somehow sounds exactly like they're supposed to; by belonging inside of the confines of this sound [of dgd], and yet you can also indistinguishably understand exactly who it is singing, even though they are blending into the sound of the overall feel of Dance Gavin Dance. do they do this on purpose? or is it the vibe of the sound and just being 'in that band' Does a leader coordinate the sound? i cant help but feel that it is intentionally unintentional.

Just like the early days of post hardcore, or post-metal-core the so-called "RISE RECORDS" era bands, bands like The Devil Wears Prada would name the titles of their songs just these random strange obscure sentences that no one would ever say in a casual conversation, [[or sometimes something that you WOULD say in casual conversation: Would just become the title?]] And in its own way you could say something kind of strange and funny sounding and look back on it and say "wow that really sounds like a song title!" Dance Gavin Dance was the embodiment of this naming mechanism.

Allow me to describe it this way: a song where the chorus says:
"Get Up and Dance! get up and dance! get up and dance!"

And the title of the song is called: "get up and dance" ... [like duh doi right?]

That's something that you're never going to find here, DGD presents you with much more astranged song titles such as:

Turn Off the Lights I'm Watching Back to the Future - Me and Zoloft Get Along Just Fine - I'm Down with Brown Town - Strawberry Swisher - Heat Seeking Ghost of Sex - Jesus H. Macy - Stroke God Millionaire : Amongst many others.

It's not cruising music that you can just casually listen to in the car, it's an obscure and Abstract piece that does not allow the mind to sit and become complacent and comfortable, the music is as complicated as their controversies, as their lineup, as the names of their songs and albums.

And yet right after a surge of Chaos you feel yourself sliding into a groove of Funk that you've never quite been able to recognize before and as soon as you get done dancing, all the sudden you find yourself singing your heart out with tears streaming down your face and moments later head banging with your devil horns raised High.

Nothing about it makes any sense, and it's complication only strives to continually compliment it's constant creative architecture that dares to always stay different, and to always have a new and unique sound from the previous album before, and even with a multitude of different lineups and different band members... still somehow manages to stay uniquely and distinctly Dance Gavin Dance.

You can't even find other bands trying to be like them because copying random assortments of utter chaos gradual Funk and peaceful Harmony is so overwhelmingly complicated to accomplish... That the bands that do attempt this keep their members together and yet their band can't seem to get off the ground...

In the early days of Rise records and especially post-metal-core bands, I would say that their first EP was largely responsible for being the door that opened from the alt punk sound.

Of the early 2000s into a new wave, an entire new genre even of new post metal core, where screaming now took the main stage (obviously they didn't invent it it was heavily influenced by other bands of the past, but from a notably different style of genre) and that set a new Staple in the time frame, between that alternative Punk sound to the new post metal-core harsh vocal synthesizer and interwoven samples of bizarre random sounds that gave each song an identifiable [[SOUND]]

That entire concept piece largely began with robot with the human hair part 1; on whatever I say is Royal ocean. The moment you heard the clean vocals you thought that you were in for something you had heard a thousand times before, and then the overlap screams begin to happen, and it ushered in a new era of something you've never heard before, as the music begins to escalate and change you find yourself getting more and more involved with every passing moment.
a moment in time i am very grateful for being a teenager in because i grew with that sound, that culture that movement, and you can see WISIRO is the album between the alt punk bands and the new post hardcore bands even just before the TDWP explosion.

The history is far more complicated and I try to not get too involved, I just want to appreciate the music itself and from a distance, but every time I find myself where a few months have gone by... or maybe even a year or two: where I haven't listened to Dance Gavin Dance...

Then I stumble upon another track and not only do I force myself back into the rabbit hole...

But I go through and play every single album as if I'm getting ready to start a Lord of the Rings Hexilogy, it doesn't matter if there's over six movies that are 3 hours long each I will spend the next couple of months forcing myself through one of the greatest complex structures of Art I have ever accidentally stumbled upon.

and i find myself hating it, loving it, relating to random abstract lyrics, singing it loud, screaming it louder, dancing, head bobbing, funking, jamming, sliding, vibing, the UGHN face, the UNNFFFFFF face, the jaw on the floor :O , and another strange random assortment of emotions that words don't seem to have the ability to consistently convey...

An emotional roller coaster ride that attaches itself only to their unique Style that is so overwhelmingly unmatched throughout their entire lineage of albums...

That I genuinely fear that I will grow old and nothing else on this planet will ever come close to being anything like it.

I can't call myself some Die-Hard fan who knows every single last shit that Tilian took...

But God fucking damn it if I'm not a fan of Dance Gavin Dance.

How would it work..

I was thinking. If DGD played one venue/stadium but they played every single album with original front man for every album.

3 albums per show, for 4 days.
Or
2 albums per show for 5 days.

Maybe sub Mess for a couple of days for a break. but I’m thinking who can do harsh vocals like mess to cover.

But everyone would be exhausted. The band and the crowd.
How can this work?

I need an Andrew version of this song because I can't even pretend to hit those Tillian high notes.

Jason Ellis performance on Carl Barker wins with Tim Ferrick’s Count Bassy in a close Second. Other songs mentioned were Don’t Tell Dave, Head Hunter, Feels Bad Man and a personal favorite of mine, SLOUCH!!

Carl Barker
Count Bassy
Don’t Tell Dave
Feels Bad Man
Slouch

I know, I know, it’s silly, but I genuinely think Trap Door is one of the best songs this band has ever made. I remember liking it before, but as I listen more and more, it’s become a song that’s just, impossible not to get incredibly excited about. Will Swan fucking MURDERS the riffs on the song, Jon’s screams are as impeccable as always, Matt works his magic on drums, and I think it’s one of the songs where Andrew genuinely shines the best. Not to mention this song fucking rips live.

Wanted this since Jackpot Juicer Dropped. Got it a week before Concert. Maybe someone will spot it ✌🏻

Cologne 4th of September!

I’ve been working on this painting as a gift for my bf for months now, I just wanted to share my progress as I’m almost done! It’s not exactly like the album cover but I hope I got the general idea across

I have a difficult time understanding him and then when I read the lyrics I will go “yeah my brain wouldve never grouped those words together anyway”. Anyone good at deciphering him no lyric reading? One time I was high tho and heard him clearly lol

For me it's Jackpot Juicer ❤️

I'm going to the London 02 dgd gig that is coming up soon . It says doors open 7 , I do know the vip email details will be sent 24 hours before the gig . But I'm considering going to a 0330 football game before hand. What time has the vip start time been for these recent dates . I have e a feeling I will be cutting it close if I go to the game and do the vip thing ..

Most of the worst song discussions are cut short since everyone here agrees that the worst song is by far Calientamento Global. If we exclude it form the debate what would you label the worst?

For me It would be People You Know, altough i really like the initial metalcoreish riff, the rest of the song just don't cut it for me.

I would really like to know yall's opinion.

If you were showing someone DGD for the first time and could only pick one song from each lead, which 4 would you show them?

Spooks was the ultimate winner with Carve not being too far behind. Other songs highlighted were Son of Robot, Philosopher King and of course the ear worm that is Lemon Meringue Tie.

Bass players for Albums

Eric Lodge: DBM1, DBM2, Self Titled

Tim Ferrick: Acceptance Speech - Jackpot Juicer

Jason Ellis: Happiness

I’ve watched this video of times new Roman for years. I can’t find anything of Jonny wearing this on YouTube. Is it gone forever? Please help me find it.

Still anticipating LP 12 announcement and I’m hoping for the one year of pantheon they announce it along with the pantheon instrumental. Was js wondering what yall would hope for either for the 1 year or js in general from the band