Anthony Morgan at UK-based Metal Forces recently spoke with DRAGONFORCE guitarist/founder Herman Li. An excerpt is available below.

(New vocalist) Marc Hudson’s entrance into the DragonForce line-up was publicly announced in March 2011. “Apart from the musical side, one thing that Marc really has is that he is a really fast learner,” the axeman enthuses. “Coming in as a non-professional who was playing pubs he was able to learn really quickly, and he got better and better while he was still recording the album and still while we were rehearsing the old songs as well as the new songs.

“We did a lot of jamming on new songs to get him confident before going into the studio. That was so he could express a song by himself, instead of him reading from a lyric sheet in front of a microphone and things like that for example. That’s why we did all this rehearsing and jamming that we didn’t do before, because we had to integrate Marc into the band. That was so that it was a real band instead of Marc plus DragonForce. We had to do all this jamming to make sure he knew what was going on, he knew us and all that. That was the way to bring out his confidence and things. Confidence needs some time to grow, so his first show and his tenth show are different things. The progress that he made while in the band before we finished the album was a huge leap though. That’s one thing that was really important.”

On April 2012’s The Power Within, Herman feels that DragonForce really brought its ‘metal side to the surface.’ “I think that was due a mixture of everything, including the approach to the way we made this album,” he muses. “Previously on the last two albums, we used to just write the music and then go straight to the studio to record it. On this album we didn’t; we wrote the music, jammed it out, and played it together as a band before we even recorded the album. We had more time to rehearse these songs and play them, so it definitely made a difference. Just the approach was much different, and I guess we wanted to reflect that kind of organic feel of the band playing the songs together on the album. Previously we used to just write the music, record the album straight away before we even played it together, and then go on tour.”

Given the sheer complexity of past DragonForce tunes, it would be natural to assume that learning such compositions just prior to tour commitments was a mammoth task. “We did it back on the second album, where it was like ‘Oh God, the songs are so long,’” the guitarist remembers. “If I take you back to 2004, when we went on tour doing songs from Sonic Firestorm we found songs like ‘My Spirit Will Go On’ and ‘Fury Of The Storm’ really difficult to play. Now they’re the easiest songs to play though, and we can have a conversation while playing them. We’ve grown, gotten better I think.”

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Dragonforce have released their new album, The Power Within. Check out an album preview below:

The Power Within full tracklisting is as follows:

'Holding On'

'Fallen World'

'Cry Thunder'

'Give Me the Night'

'Wings of Liberty'

'Seasons'

'Heart of the Storm'

'Die By the Sword'

'Last Man Stands'

'Seasons' (Acoustic Version)

Roadrunner has made available the track ‘Fallen World’ for free download at this location.

There will also be a digital and vinyl version featuring bonus tracks 'Cry Thunder (Live Rehearsal)', 'Heart of the Storm (Alternative Chorus Version)' and 'Avant La Tempête (Instrumental)', plus an exclusive box set featuring:

- CD Version
- Access Code for Bonus Material plus
- DragonForce Flag,
- DF Flashlight/Bottle Opener,
- Set of 6 DF Beer Mats featuring band cartoons by Frederic Leclercq.

Dragonforce recently released a video for the track 'Cry Thunder', featured on The Power Within. Watch the new clip below: