DRAGONFORCE ALBUM ULTRA KICKS-YOUR-ASS

Dragonforce has released their new album Ultra Beatdown, and guitarist Herman Li talked about the effort and their approach to live songs on tour.

Dragonforce has released their new album, Ultra Beatdown, and it’s the technically gifted band’s follow-up to 2006’s Inhuman Rampage. The band just finished up a stint on the Mayhem Festival with Mastodon, Disturbed and Slipknot among others.

Guitarist Herman Li talked about the title of the record.

“Since the second album Sonic Firestorm and the last album Inhuman Rampage, we always had titles that are supposed to be original and no one used it before. So, there isn’t a band, there isn’t a video game, there isn’t a song called Sonic Firestorm, Inhuman Rampage, same for Ultra Beatdown as far as I know. So, we’re always trying to find an original title. There’s a reason. Everyone hates the title when they first hear it because they’re not familiar with the combination of those words, but it means basically that it’s gonna kick your ass, ultra kick-your-ass.”

Li talked about why they decided that the first single from the collection would be “Heroes Of Our Time.”

“We wanted to pick a song that doesn’t sound exactly like ‘Through The Fire And Flames,’ not exactly or exactly, it sounds quite different. The chorus is all major chords. ‘Through The Fire And Flames’ is more of a sadder sounding kind of song. It is I guess our most famous song right now. Really the whole structure [of Heroes Of Our Time] is totally different from ‘Through The Fire and Flames’ and to give people a different angle into the band. It’s also the first song on the album, the first single, so we’re going to play that live obviously. But whatever. Some people say, ‘Oh, it sounds exactly like all the Dragonforce songs,’ but it’s like someone listens to rap music and never heard it, everything sounds the same to them…or techno music, but yeah, you’re always going to get those people.”

The guitarist was asked if he was worried on the Mayhem tour that inferior recordings of the new material would get out.

“To be honest, recording device or this, they always sound rubbish anyway. What are you going to get out of it? I guess one thing about this recording stuff is that it can hurt the band because a lot of people surprisingly in the world do not understand that a recording on the phone, video, does not sound anything close to real life and all this distortion and things create noises and stuff and they end up thinking this is the real sound of the band. I read so many comments on YouTube about any type of bands from Dream Theater to any type of bands. Even Dream Theater?! Yeah? So I’m standing here puzzled.”

Dragonforce is set to tour North America in support of Ultra Beatdown starting November 1 in Hawaii and running through December 19 in Vancouver. Check dragonforce.com for a complete itinerary and ticket information.rn