review: DragonForce

DragonForce

Extreme Power Metal

Metal Blade Records

27 September 2019

Sound: The long-running veterans continue their tradition of fun-loving fast melodic metal.

Production: The album features the contemporary production of a big use of studio magic to create music that sounds flawless. The band has shown that live they play this music, but it doesn’t sound as grandiose and full when it is live, but this is normal for most fancy production metal albums. This album should be a pleasant listening experience for fans of melodic, happy metal.

Instrumentation: Big guitar melodies, big keyboard melodies and big shredding is the brand of the band, as it always has been the case.

Vocals: The singing is high and melodic air raid siren. The tone of the voice is rather smooth, not gritty nor rough.

Songs: The songs are catchy and it seems like any of them could be a fan favorite.

Lyrics: The band likes lyrics about immortality, eternity, the future and heroic deeds.

Potential audience: Fans of fun-loving melodic metal styles across the board are the target audience.

Similar bands: Keyboard-friendly and shred-friend melodic bands with high singing generally share lots of similarities with this band.

Assessment: Members have come and gone, but the two guitarists Sam and Herman remain. The sound has changed over the years from fast, heroic shredding power metal to more of a fun-loving computer-gamey sound. They have reached a more party-oriented sound. However, big melodies and lots of guitars remain a fundamental aspect of their sound. They still write songs like they want the tracks to become fan favorites at concerts. In that sense, the mission of power metal is still at the center of the music. Often the music sounds like Beyoncé or Lady Gaga with shredding guitars. They are not afraid of being criticized for going over the top, for overachieving and for overdoing things in excess, and their new album’s title is a declaration to their fans that after 20 years and eight albums, they embrace the things that have endeared them to their fans. In fact, this new album even has a Céline Dion cover and frankly it just sounds like another DragonForce song on the album. DragonForce is a show, it’s always been a show, no apologies, and everyone is welcome to the show. Rock and roll all nite, and party every day. facebook.com/dragonforce/