Oh, you had me at “biker prog”, PR dude, if for no other reason than that the utter trainwreck of a STEPPENWOLF / NEKTAR hybrid would be fun to watch go down in flames. Could it possibly be worthwhile, though? Alright, VOIDGAZER, hit me…

While the name/project itself has been around for about 5 years now, a complete overhaul in 2019-2020 of all but guitarist Austin Rakey could spell either doom or a reinvention, of sorts. ‘Jesus Take The Needle’, spends around a minute revving the engines, as if to make sure it’s truly good to go. The main riff of the verse is a bit sludge-lite, and it’s clear the band mesh well together as players, unexpectedly dropping a dose of grind-ish groove around three minutes in, while keeping things from sounding copy/pasted, until…

‘Expectations Management’ stumbles, and hard, the ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ to the ‘Rock Of Ages’ of before, haphazard where focus had been. Unfortunately, it’s more of the same with the title track, though a few moments rise to the occasion, as in the ill-placed but nifty blues section about halfway through that needlessly ends by getting slammed into faux-grind mode for a few seconds, and I’m beginning to understand that maybe someone needs a lesson in prog. It’s not some herky-jerky, hither and yon yanking of the listener between two disparate points “just because”, but that seems to be the impression here, flow be damned.

Spotting early on that ‘Blast Equalizer’ had no idea where it was headed, we move to the equally spastic ‘Sexual Sadist Serial Slasher’ and the worst part about this whole affair is that the chops are obviously there in the case of each member, but as a unit they seem to have their sights set on appealing to the tech/djent-core market. My advice, dial back (way back) on the “prog”, pick a lane, and focus on your sound, not everyone else’s.

As it stands, Dance Of The Undesirables is simply undesirable, a portrait of one of those local bands that probably puts on a decent show, but you mainly go because they’re your buddies.
Review By: Lord Randall

VOIDGAZER
Dance Of The Undesirables
Independent
1.5 / 6