I remember when I first heard Dragonforce. I think the song was "My Spirit Must Go On". My initial reaction was "Holy crap! This is crazy!". For a while I considered Dragonforce the best power metal band to arrive in ages; their blisteringly fast guitar and keyboard solos, combined with the general intense speed of their songs won me, and loads of fans over.
However I never purchased any of their albums do to the fact that whenever I see them in my town, they're always $23.99 or over, so I always pass in favour of something cheaper. Then they recorded a new album and signed with Roadrunner, and I was excited because new Roadrunner releases are usually very cheap. So I finally got around to looking into_Inhuman Rampage_, their latest release, and saw it for $14.99 at the store and bought it. So how exactly did it fare with me?
"Through The Fire And Flames" was the track I heard before buying the album and loved it. It's an all around great power metal opener filled with energy and is a good representation of the band. Then "Revolution Deathsquad" came next. More great stuff but I felt like something was beginning to bug me and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. "Storming The Burning Fields" follows and offers more great power metal, but that lingering feeling is still there. When I'm a minute into "Operation Ground And Pound" it hits me: all of these songs are exactly the same.
Why did I not bother describing any of the tracks following "Through The Fire And Flames"? Simple, because they're nearly identical to that track. Start off with a huge power metal riff or keyboard line, then have the band explode and play at rapid speed with the usual verse-chorus-verse formula, and then followed by a guitar and/or keyboard solo, another few verses and chorus'. At this point we throw in three-four minutes of guitar/keyboard solo wankery that may seem improssive initially, but after a while, these instrumental bits start to become stale when they happen in_every single song_. The song then goes back to verse-chorus-verse, before finally ending the song. The chorus' are very catchy, but they don't reach the heights that bands like Blind Guardian and Helloween have achieved with their epic and unforgettable chorus'.
The album tracklisting says that there are eight songs on here, but really there are only three. The excellent "Through The Fire And Flames", followed by forty minutes of nonstop, repetitive wankery, then concluded with the tame "Trail Of Broken Hearts", which sounds like a usual mid-paced power metal ballad done Dragonforce style and sounds good, with the inevitable amount of a high cheese factor. Actually scrap that, it's power metal,every song reeks with cheese, but good cheese!
Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate this album, in fact I see it as a technical masterpiece showing a band that has truly mastered their instruments and manages to play fast, catchy power metal while doing it.Inhuman Rampage is a fun album to listen to in bursts, and I'd imagine this would be great to see live. I say "bursts" because the lack of originality in the songs really makes it hard to sit down and listen to all 54 minutes of this album in a row.
After really listening to this album, I went back to the previous songs I'd heard and loved by them and realized that while they aren't as repitive as the material on this album, they're repetitive, nonetheless. However considering the similarity of all of the band's output, I don't see why anyone should bother getting their entire discography: you only need one album and you're done.
While suffering from a lack of ingenuiety, Drahonforce are a great way of introducing power metal to the masses. In fact, the band seems to have broken into the mainstream, joining Opeth, In Flames, and Children Of Bodom, who've all been able to sell out shows in North America recently. So while they make good, technical music, don't expect anything of a revolutionary masterpiece here from their previous albums: they're a power metal band, plain and simple. Now all they need is better songwriting skills and they'll be set.
