LIVE REVIEW + PHOTOS: DANCE GAVIN DANCE AT THE O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN, LONDON 12/09/26

London has become the terminus for many international band’s EU/UK tours, and Dance Gavin Dance continued the trend, pulling into the capital with riffs, dance moves and a legendary 20 years of material in their back pockets.

“This is the last night of the tour and our first time in London” Issac Wilson of Dwellings announced to the Kentish Town Forum. Hailing from Sacramento, California, the excitement the band radiated was infectious and it wasn't only the already-fans front and centre that caught the hype.

On ‘Lemonade’ the fourth track from the band’s debut album, it’s easy to understand why Dance Gavin Dance brought along this hometown 5-piece with them in Europe. With flavours of Pierce the Veil blended Americana math-rock, their influences may vary around their contemporaries but the output is anything but formulaic.

“This is the best fucking crowd we've had all tour” Wilson grinned and treated the crowd to a funky cover of ‘Clint Eastwood’ by Gorillaz.

Ending with ‘Gold Leaf’, from their follow up 2023 album Little Garden, an offbeat and dreamy track, with a jaunty ‘Adams Family’ vibe, Dwellings will surely be hoping they can make their headline debut in London soon.

Bringing it back a little closer to home, Nottingham’s own As December Falls reminded the Forum, “This isn’t our first time in London so we know how loud you guys can be!”

Indeed, the band have frequented many stages in London as support, and of their own accord, stopping off in the capital a year previous on their ‘Everything’s On Fire But I’m Fine’ tour. The namesake song going down well in Kentish Town in 2026.

“We were in Bristol yesterday and they were pretty loud” frontwoman Bethany Curtis teased the crowd. The loud booing that followed was vaguely surprising, (is the London/Bristol rivalry really that fierce?) but London were determined to come out on top sending a barrage of crowd surfers over the barrier.

As December Falls are a self proclaimed ‘‘band of nerds’’ with the outfit offering the chance to anyone signing up to their mailing list to win a twitch gaming session with the emo-rockers, an inventive bribe if we ever saw one.

After getting the room to make an ‘‘unbreakable vow’’ that everyone would come to the headline tour later in the year, Bassist Timmy Francis warned “This one is a heavy one” for ‘Teeth’. Heavy being a subjective term as, yes the track leans on the louder side of the outfit’s catalogue, but retained their signature emo banger vibes. 

Ending on ‘Therapy’ hopefully the promise made earlier in the set will come true and a good number of London fans will be back for their yet to be announced headline jaunt.

“I hear it's a sellout tonight London!” Andrew Wells beamed as Dance Gavin Dance took to the stage to a deafening reception. For the last night of the tour, London was certainly in the mood to see it off with a bang. With a setlist leaning heavily on the newest album Pantheon - released a year ago to the day, DGD celebrated that first birthday with much support from London town, starting off, pulling no punches with singalong album opener ‘Animal Surgery’.

The set however, didn’t ignore the other era’s of DGD, Wells offering “Let's take it back to ‘Mothership’” following up with ‘Chucky vs. The Giant Tortoise’, from an era of the band where he was holding firm on guitar duties.

The changes in the band line up over the years has never dampened or diminished the quality and originality of the Sacramento legends. Founding and remaining members - drummer Matt Mingus, Screamer, Jon Mess and guitarist Will Swan have not only steered the ship over the years, but in Swan’s case, created an entire genre around the band’s unique sound, now firmly established as ‘Swancore’, with another of Wells’ projects - ‘Eidola’ signed to Swan’s record label - Blue Swan. Bringing with him from that band, Sergio Medina, (also of other Swancore/Blue Swan band Royal Coda,((of which Swan is also a member))), to replace the late Tim Feerick on bass, the family of Swancore is, well lets say - pretty incestuous.

Before ‘Speed Demon’ Wells led a show of hands for newcomers vs returners to the live DGD experience, In turns out quite a large majority were first timers, which could be a consequence of the three years since their last foray to the UK in 2023 on both their headline tour and in support of Don Broco.

Speaking of Don Broco, one of the tracks to go off hardest in the room in the middle of the set - ‘Synergy’, originally recorded with the Bedford band’s frontman Rob Damianai, left Wells and Mess both starfishing on the stage. Mess himself is usually up to shenanigans as he patiently waits for his sections - filling in time with various low energy dance moves, from feet shuffling to acting out lyrics, before calmly but powerfully delivering the skillful screaming parts that go some way to making DGD so recognisable.

“We're gonna take this next one back to the Death Star” Wells grinned, referring to the fan given nickname for the 2008 self-titled album, dubbed thus, due to the evocative album artwork. Before jumping into the ever popular ‘Uneasy Hearts Weight The Most’, we were instead Rick-Rolled before Isaac Wilson from Dwellings returned to the stage to join DGD in one of their most iconic earlier songs.

Taking everything down a notch for ‘Blue Dreams’ lights went up around the room while Wells stretched his legs- leaving Mess to shuffle around the stage on a clean vocal heavy track which retains the archetypal DGD Swancore style - funky, frantic math rock with a ton of silliness, surreal lyrics and confidence in their own style.

‘We have a brand new record, it's mixed, it's ready, it's coming’, Wells promised before the band returned for an encore of ‘All The Way Down’ and ‘Evaporate’.

Striking a good mix of putting the newest album front and centre, and sating the fan’s desire for the older and more established tracks, DGD left Kentish Town with the promise of new music and the hope they won’t have to wait three more years for the return of the Swancore spaceship to land again.

Words and photos by Imogen Bird.