Cool To Be Uncool

here’s no doubt that having a song featured in Guitar Hero was good for DragonForce,” admits guitarist Herman Li, when asked to comment on the video game now inextricably linked to his band’s name. “But it’s simply not true that we are only known because of Guitar Hero. We’ve worked hard for many years refining our sound and playing shows – so we know what we’ve done to make this band a success. Besides, we all have really thick skin so whenever we hear that it just rolls of our backs.”

Li isn’t lying when he speaks of DragonForce’s longevity. Founded in 1999 under the moniker DragonHeart, the band were quickly noticed for a groundbreaking demo that took the power-metal sound and injected it with steroids approved by Joe Satriani and Italian nutters Rhapsody (now Rhapsody Of Fire). A record deal and a name change quickly followed and DragonForce immediately established themselves as standard bearers for the European power-metal revival. Their quick rise to fame was made even more impressive by the fact the band didn’t hail from Germany or Sweden, but England, a country that had seemingly rejected its past as the nation that birthed Rainbow and Iron Maiden. So why did DragonForce become defenders of the true metal faith when their style of music was considered as cool as dad-rock?

"We were the most uncool band there was."

“There was absolutely nothing going on in England when we started – well nothing that required good guitar-playing,” confirms Li. “Everything was no solos, no melodies – we were the most uncool band there was. People were laughing at us – they’d tell us we sounded like something out of the 1980s – which we took as a badge of pride. We had always listened to Judas Priest along with all the really fast thrash bands. On top of that we loved all the guitar gods – Satriani, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen. So that was DragonForce – the speed of thrash, the old school metal approach and the shredding of guitar gods.”

Fast-forward to 2014 and DragonForce are on top of the world. Their latest album Maximum Overload is receiving rave reviews and stands as one of the band’s most thoughtful excursions. And just to surprise you it even boasts a cover of Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire.

“We did some different things with this record,” says Li. “There are different tempos – not every song is really fast – and the slower songs add a new element to our sound. We also got Matt Heafy [Trivium] to do some guest vocals – and he added a real layer of aggression on the songs he did. On top of that we did the cover of Ring Of Fire. We used to hate covers because so many bands just tried to reproduce the original. We really tried hard to ensure that the song sounded DragonForceish – so I think it’s a great new take on a classic track.”