Dragonforce

DragonForce's axemen Sam Totman and Herman Li can no doubt light up a fret board. However, the best thing about Ultra Beatdown [Roadrunner Records], the follow-up to DragonForce's massively successful Inhuman Rampage, is ZP Theart's vocal performance. He's morphed into a bombastic arena-rock crooner with a set of vocal cords that could shake Valhalla to its very core. Ultra Beatdown is reminiscent of the infamous "Ride of the Valkyries" scene in Apocalypse Now—that incredible attack where Robert Duvall's Col. Kilgore bombards a Viet Kong village to the tune of Wagner. In the same way, DragonForce's latest album is as operatic and symphonic as it is deadly and heavy—and ZP Theart is DragonForce's Col. Kilgore.

The album commences with a flurry of guitar leads on "Heroes of Our Time." The solos furiously criss-cross in an orchestral fashion. Totman and Li somehow manage to play even faster than before. This is the perfect soundtrack for any 15-year-old who loves Mountain Dew and Guitar Hero equally. However, even in the shadow of all the speed, ZP's voice soars. He carries the chorus like a classic Steve Perry hook, and it's hard not to picture the sound resounding across an arena. "The Fire Still Burns" and "Heartbreak Armaggedon" show everyone further extending their range. The music definitely still bears that same videogame sensibility, but cuts like "A Flame For Freedom" possess more of a hard rock attitude, perhaps a product of all of DragonForce's recent time in the U.S. "Inside the Winter Storm" shatters even more speed records, while "The Warrior Inside" is the perfect epic closer.

In usual DragonForce fashion, most of the songs stretch past the seven-minute mark. However, they never seem too long, and the band has perfected the power metal formula. In the end, whether it's Wagner or DragonForce, you can always find a good musical accompaniment for a beatdown.

—Rick Florino
09.15.08

Look up the word "juggernaut" in the dictionary and you may just find Dragonforce's photo alongside the definition. Not only does it aptly describe the nature of their hyperkinetic "extreme power metal," but also their vertiginous ascent from utter music community obscurity to new media, errr...juggernaut, when their breakthrough single, "Through the Fire and Flames," became first a YouTube sensation and later a keystone of the Guitar Hero video game phenomenon. This transition -- largely based on the new millennium's most unapologetic display of guitar shredding yet -- propelled the surprising sales of the sextet's third album, Inhuman Rampage, and laid quite a foundation for its much anticipated follow-up, 2008's Ultra Beatdown, which, among other things, will face immediate accusations of repeating its predecessor's winning formula (not to mention key song title words like ''Flame," "Fire," ''Storm," etc.). But this accusation doesn't hold much water in the historical scope of the power metal genre -- a genre that has barely evolved beyond the basic template set down by Helloween's form-defining Keeper of the Seven Keys, Pt. 1, all the way back in 1987. By those standards, Dragonforce's aforementioned guitar shredding and extreme metal intensity alone already qualify as rather radical innovations. What's more, even though frenetic new tracks like "Heroes of Our Time" and "The Fire Still Burns" evidently descend from the band's signature hit (memorable for Herman Li and Sam Totman's ever-spectacular solos more than any innovative songwriting traits), Ultra Beatdown introduces several new elements into the Dragonforce sound -- not the least of which being more abundant, subsonic tempos. Previously wheeled out almost exclusively for the band's mercifully rare, intolerably saccharine ballads (oftentimes wimpier than Journey, and here represented by a somewhat more palatable drunken soccer anthem called "A Flame for Freedom"), these frequently provide welcome breaths of air amidst the album's still prevailing maelstrom. "Reasons to Live," for example, adopts a tango-like rhythm for its solo break, capped by a stunning synthesizer flurry from Vadim Pruzhanov; "Heartbreak Armageddon" boasts a surprising psychedelic flavor in its midsection; and "The Warrior Inside" breaks up Li and Totman's usual six-string frenzy with a stately orchestrated synth section -- plus a soaring finale led by vocalist ZP Theart. And with standouts like "The Last Journey Home" and its only slightly less distinguished fellow epic, "Inside the Winter Storm," the band shows greater dynamic range than usual, arguably earning some definitive "progressive" metal credentials once and for all, beyond the sheer extended lengths of the songs. All of the above is still couched within the band's general extreme power metal template, mind you, complete with tireless drummer Dave Mackintosh (still quicker than a humping heavy metal hamster) and hapless bass player Frédéric Leclercq, who is unselfish enough not to mind remaining mostly invisible throughout. So that about covers the Ultra Beatdown "juggernaut": come for the guitar solos, stay for the music. Power metal may not be the most inventive musical style on the planet, but Dragonforce are making it more exciting than most anyone else has for quite some time. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia, All Music Guide