DragonForce: Extreme Power Metal

Sometimes the world can be a little bit rubbish. Bad things happen to people you love, people you love do bad things. You lose your job, you lose friends, you struggle to pay your way. Yep, sometimes it's a challenge for all of us. I'm not saying all these apply to me right now but certainly some have recently and one thing has consistently helped and that one thing is the pure escapism of power metal. Just this year there has been Sabaton's The Great War, HammerFall's Dominion and the seemingly unheralded yet utterly magnificent cheesefests that are Gloryhammer's Legends from Beyond the Galactic Terrorvortex and Freedom Call's quite stupid-yet-awesome M.E.T.A.L. Now we can add DragonForce's Extreme Power Metal to the big list of 2019 fun.

One thing for sure is that Extreme Power Metal is the best album which DragonForce have recorded with 'new' vocalist Marc Hudson and he is a a commanding presence in the middle of the six-string fun of mainmen Sam Totman and Hermai Li who says"In this age, where our music is easily accessible, I am not going to waste time trying to describe the sound of our new album. I'll let the music do the talking!� The music quite categorically suggests that this is DragonForce having a great deal of fun (that word again) despite the departures of Vadim Pruzhanov (keyboards) and the more recent defection of bassist Frédéric Leclercq.

If you aren't instantly amused by a song title like "Cosmic Power of the Infinite Shred Machine" then you might as well jog along right now as it's as ludicrously fast as you might expect yet quirky enough to not be an exact repetition of past glories and if the album as a whole isn't quite as good as their magnificent debut Valley of the Damned so what? Most albums by anybody aren't.

The 'Force are always a (excuse me) threat to be reckoned with on the more balladic tunes and "The Last Dragonborn" is this album's "Starfire" although the militarily percussive "Remembrance Day" runs it pretty close. On song which is resolutely not a ballad is the DF'd version of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" which closes the album and is approximately one million times better than the original.

Track Listing:
1. Highway to Oblivion
2. Cosmic Power of the Infinite Shred Machine
3. The Last Dragonborn
4. Heart Demolition
5. Troopers of the Stars
6. Razorblade Meltdown
7. Strangers
8. In a Skyforged Dream
9. Remembrance Day
10. My Heart Will Go On

Added: September 29th 2019
Reviewer: Pete Pardo
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
Hits: 1033
Language: english

[ Printer Friendly Page ]
[ Send to a Friend ]