By Georgia Smith
Power metal legends Dragonforce return with their bright and sweeping new album ‘Warp Speed Warriors’, released this past Friday. Video game influences twist around cinematic fantasy narratives in this fresh and innovative new album- Herman Li and Sam Totman’s breathtaking guitars rise around the shattering heights of Marc Hudson’s vocals in this self-contained adventure into the most unchartered and playful corners of thematic power metal.
‘Warp Speed Warriors’ rips open with the first track ‘Astro Warrior Anthem’- light and bright with the quintessential stunning speed and technical skill that Dragonforce fans will have come to expect. Even in the deepest reaches of the track’s twisting, melding guitar lines and pulsing drums, the sound is so full and bright that it seems slick and easy.v Hudson’s vocals reach soaring heights alongside these climbing guitars, bolstered by the thematic choral backings.
Dragonforce’s fantasy influences are immediately apparent- the track’s lyrics are a narrative adventure of electric twists and synth-y blossoms on the metallic bloom of the sound whilst playful synth inclusions enrich the track with an almost sci-fi style edge. Triumphant, thick, shatteringly fast, ‘Astro Warrior Anthem’ is just that; overlapped notes in the guitar solos create an enjoyably blurred feel whilst the vocals soar away into the highest reaches of the band’s sound. The title of the world’s fastest band is clearly one that Dragonforce have no interest in losing any time soon, and by promising from the outset of their new album that this will be just as tight and rapid as their older work, ‘Warp Speed Warriors’ stands itself immediately in promising and exciting stead.
‘Power Of The Triforce’ is a similar jaunt into these fantasy and video game influences- a narrative of crushing demons, lost treasure and evil priestesses reaches Hudson’s famed vocal heights whilst the guitars sound fuller and richer, uplifting and exciting in their solidness. Group response vocals in the meandering verses only deepen this sense of collective adventure, whilst the tightness and catchy speed of the chorus imbibes it with a powerful sense of bright excitement and promise. Almost choral in places, the track is a sprawling tale with an undeniable power metal core; breathtakingly fast guitar solos reach screeching elevations and are filled out with subtle but catchy bass hooks. ‘Power Of The Triforce’ sounds almost shiny, open- an experimentation on the true boundaries between metal and fantasy.
This brightness is only highlighted by the slightly darker, more melancholic feel of the following ‘Kingdom Of Steel’ – a thematically rich offering of sweeping, grandiose sounds in a lament to fallen warriors. Deep tolling sounds and subtle distorted guitars set a textured backdrop to the forefronted vocals on this track- Hudson’s vocals sweep away to a deeper place, something slightly forlorn and yet still threaded throughout with the quintessential power and heights of a Dragonforce track. It strikes a powerful, rousing balance whilst retaining the entertaining tone of the earlier tracks; ‘Kingdom Of Steel’, in the fantasy terms that the album is conceptualising itself through, is a mid-point struggle made all the more poignant for the polished technical skill that has fuelled its sound.
The album clambers back to its lofty heights with ‘Burning Heart’ – tumbling over itself into cacophonous combined guitar lines layered over rapid-fire vocals. Muffled radio-style sounds, thematic spoken lines and slow building power chords imbue this thematic concept of a fantasy warscape as ‘Warp Speed Warriors’ shifts into an even fresher, more inventive gear. There is an effective balance on this track between the brightness and playfulness of tracks like ‘Astro Warrior Anthem’ and the slower, more subdued ‘Kingdom Of Steel’; its quietly dramatic bridge explodes back into itself for a moment, before again focusing on forefronted power chords and delicate lead guitar constructions.
Dragonforce are utilizing the facets and options of power metal conventions to best relay the rich fantasy landscape that has influenced and inspired ‘Warp Speed Warriors’ whilst simultaneously showcasing the deep technicalities of the work. ‘Burning Heart’ has clear video game influences as well, these rises and falls, the tight construction, and the undeniable playfulness and brightness to the sound even in its most melancholic phases.
These fantasy game influences are never more clear than on ‘Space Marine Corps’, a Warhammer-themed rally of the Space Marines against their enemies in an ingenious blend of power metal and military drill. Dragonforce’s grandiose, regal sound sounds genuinely warlike- triumphant and rousing with a satisfyingly solid rhythm beating from beneath. Thematically clever, this track builds the concepts of the album into the mechanics of the music with its marching tempo and call-and-response style guitars eventually giving into an actual military call-and-response drill. It fits almost amusingly well into the metal, with Hudson’s impassioned vocal performance thundered back at him in an innovative, high-spirited manner. The combination of military style sound clambering into the immensities and speed of the power metal that has come to embody Dragonforce and their work.
‘Prelude To Darkness’ is a short break in the journey of portentous synth sounds to build up for the following tracks and their thematic content, which tears into its follow-up ‘The Killer Queen’ with its deep, echoing thickness. ‘The Killer Queen’ has possibly the densest metal of the album and the apparent fastest guitar solos, but later breaks into the same brighter, cleaner sound of earlier tracks. Again, thudding drums beneath forefronted vocals are an effective storytelling method, whilst its narrative lyrics lay against thicker bass responses and are carried by the pulse and rhythm of its drums.
‘Warp Speed Warrior’s’ video game influences twist up with a party-metal sound in the following ‘Doomsday Party’, where a dance-style rhythm, catchy chorus and lyrical hook join forces with the conventions of power metal to create a track that is light, shiny, almost bubbly in its self-contained excitement of sound. Genuinely catchy whilst maintaining the eponymous technical guitar solos, ‘Doomsday Party’ is another clever melding of themes and ideas, and another push outwards at the confines of metal and its expectations. Electronic in places, sometimes breaking into thicker guitar sounds and distorted power chords, the track is layered with intention and execution so thickly that it fizzes; ending on an almost unexpected sparkly ballad style of forefronted vocals and piano, again twisting around the catchiness of the chorus to break into its slower reprieve- the thoughtful narrative that has woven its way through every facet of this album so far.
Similarly complex is the final original track, ‘Pixel Prison’. A slow piano opening with subtle choral vocals, the track elevates itself to high, powerful guitars carrying it into the chorus of fast and determined drums. ‘Pixel Prison’s’ guitars clamber to and tumble from great heights, rising and falling with the vocals in what is a strikingly familiar Dragonforce sound. The track has multiple phases and shifts its musical focus several times, never quite still enough to catch, running enjoyably ungoverned in its own soundscape. The same twisting sci-fi-esque guitars of earlier tracks set up for collapses into solid rhythms later on, into almost languorously slick guitar distorted into an effective and enjoyable blur. ‘Pixel Prison’ contains all of the various changes of direction that Dragonforce have experimented with on this album, and as such is an amalgamation of metallic conventions shaped to carry the rich concepts and themes that have made ‘Warp Speed Warriors’ such a fantastical adventure into the fictional lands it inhabits, as well as into the corners of the expectations of the genre.
The final track of the album is a cover of Taylor Swift’s ‘Wildest Dreams’. What initially appears as a strange choice works startlingly perfectly with the overall tone and feeling of the album- playfulness and catchiness coating a metallic core of tight technical skill. The pop rhythm in the power metal style elevates itself, sounding catchy and bright even when layered and dense, with the high points of the song used to sweep the metallic sound as open as it could possibly go. The track is lighter, the drums and guitars less furious, yet the core of the metal is never lost- ensured by the room that Dragonforce have made in the track for the famed solos that have made them such titans of the genre.
‘Warp Speed Warriors’ manages to be playful and skillful in equal measures throughout its ten-track run, and in the deluxe version where it continues into three additional versions of previous tracks featuring other metal musicians (‘Astro Warrior Anthem’ with Matthew K.Heafy and Nita Strauss, ‘Burning Heart’ with Alissa White-Gluz, and ‘Doomsday Party’ with Elize Ryd), as well as an instrumental version of ‘Power Of The Triforce’, encompassing an enriching change of vocals to include harsh metallic vocals and operatic metal female vocals. It plays almost like a video game itself, with its influences and themes so prevalent throughout that the balance between concept and execution reaches the knife-edge balance of an expression of well-earned and masterfully-crafted skill.
- ‘Warp Speed Warriors‘ is out now.
- Dragonforce play three sold out co-headline dates with Amaranthe this Friday (22 March) in Bristol, Saturday (23 March) in Manchester and Sunday (24 March) in London.
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