Don't you love video games? Who doesn't love video games? I love playing computer games, especially MMORPG's and online first person shooters like Wolfenstein etc. And one of the things that we also love is good music to go along with it. Fast-paced music can even make the battle seem a lot more intense, and epic, so that every jump you make to dodge a nade seems like a gallant soar. Heck, it might even make you look like a hero for dodging a rocket noob's cheap attack. The same naturally goes with MMORPG's. There's nothing I like better than listening to fast-paced music while grinding to increase my XP level.
Though DragonForce refers to itself as "extreme power metal", there is nothing that extreme about them. Fast rapid drumming, lightning fast guitar riffs, some energetic clean vocals, and some nice keys mixed into it, and you have DragonForce. And based on my first paragraph, you can imagine that they've incorporated a lot of video game noises into their music, with Herman Li making various video game sounds on his guitar that may bring back memories of the old arcades. DragonForce is the type of band that on first listen, will have you exclaiming, "Wow, these are some crazy guitarists!" Well, this is off topic, but though the guitar's amazing in this album, the guitarists are in reality, nothing impressive live. DragonForce sucks live, but that has nothing to do with the album. Even though the guitar's great, it can barely make up for the rest of the album.
Even though Sam and Herman play some pretty nice twin guitar solos, and they are some of the fastest shredders nowadays, you gotta take off some points for their creativity. DragonForce started out as one of the most promising new bands, with just one fatal flaw. Their formula is so apparent, that when you hear a sample of a song, you could probably just guess how the rest of the song goes. And this album does reflect somewhat on their occassional lack of creativity. I mean, what's up with "Operation Ground And Pound" and "Cry for Eternity"? Are they like, some long-lost twins or something? In the beginning, if it wasn't for the fact that they were in different key signatures, you could have easily have mistaken them for the same song.
ZP Theart is a pretty energetic vocalist, but by no means extreme. He sounds like he's trying to revive some of the old glam metal vocalists of the '80s. At least, revive their voices before Nirvana came in and dominated the music scene with grunge. In some cases, I find it hard to believe that he's not a love child of Axl Rose, afterall, they do sound quite alike. The vocals overall are fairly melodic for a metal band, but the lyrics are extremely repetitive. Even the melodies are fairly similar to each other. But "Storming the Burning Fields" and "Trail Of Broken Hearts" are probably the songs where the vocals are the best on this album. For everything else, there's not much to distinguish from the other songs.
Drumming, everyone loves hyper-fast drumming, right? Now, out of all the members, the drummer probably stores most of the talent. He's the only one of them who's actually capable of playing studio-fast live, and flawlessly. And as a result, you have some pretty intense drumming going on. The drumming is probably responsible for most of the sense of speed going on. However, despite his talent, the drumming is very repetitive, and really, it's just a bunch of speed-metal drumming and drum rolls. "Body Breakdown" is probably the only song which shows even a slight change in drumming.
Lastly is the keyboards. you really don't see much usage of keyboards in metal bands nowadays, do you? At least, not heavy usage. DragonForce begs to difer, as the keys are another thing that paints DragonForce in a positive light. The keyboards are used pretty heavily, with some pretty sweet chords and scales played. In "Trail Of Broken Hearts" (which also happens to have been written by the keyboardist), loads of brilliantly thought out chords are played, to give it sort of a nice arena rock feel. Really, this is a great power ballad to end this album, and is one of the best songs, despite it not fitting DragonForce's signature characteristics.
Basically, DragonForce does contain some pretty creative guitar here and there, and some nicely done keys, but overall, DragonForce really doesn't stick out as much anymore. Sure, it may stick out from the mainstream crowd, but the individuality of songs never stick out. If you were to be asked to describe a song on this album, unless you've heard the song so much that you memorized the melody and lyrics, or if you were describing "Trail of Broken Hearts", really, your description can apply to any of their songs. Hope you liked my review, folks.
