Roadrunner Records recently conducted an interview with DRAGONFORCE guitarist Sam Totman. In the interview Totman talks about the band’s new album The Power Within, new vocalist Marc Hudson and more. Excerpts from the interview are below:

Roadrunner Records: The songs are a lot shorter and more concise this time. Was that your intention all along, or did it just happen that way?

Sam Totman: “No, definitely, I actually thought of that before we started, it was definitely something I wanted to do. Mainly because the world we live in now, it’s quite sad, but everybody’s got such a short attention span, nobody’ll listen to a seven-minute song anymore. And me too – I like long songs occasionally, but I can’t listen to a whole album of them. So I didn’t want to listen myself to another DragonForce album full of seven-minute-long songs. But at the same time, I didn’t want to lose anything that we’ve got. So what we tried to do was, if we’ve got a shorter song, there’s still just as much guitar in there, but the instrumental sections won’t be quite as long. We put it throughout the song instead – there’ll be a lot of guitar underneath the vocals, and like that. I see it with my friends; in the old days, you’d put a CD on and you couldn’t be bothered changing it, but now, everyone I see, all they do is flick through their songs on their MP3 player. I’ve gotten the impression that hardly anyone listens to an album straight through anymore, so it needs to be condensed down a bit, I think, and I’m the same way. I didn’t think I’d ever end up like that, but I’m finding that I’ll put a record on and listen to a few songs, then change to something else. So that’s why I decided the time has come to do shorter songs, basically. Saying that, there is at least one on there that’s six or seven minutes long [‘Wings Of Liberty’, 7:23]. We haven’t sold out or anything, if people are worried about that. It wasn’t done to be more commercial, it was just to condense it down, basically.”

Roadrunner Records: How has Marc changed the way the older songs are performed? Do you drop those down, or go up with them, anything like that?

Sam Totman: “Well, obviously, when we chose him, we had to get someone that could do the older songs, and he’s doing really amazing. We knew he could do them anyway, before we picked him, otherwise he wouldn’t have been much use to us (laughs). But actually, he’s really good. We used to tune down to E flat with ZP (Theart) in the band, just to make it a bit easier for him, and now with Marc we’ve gone back to the proper tuning in E, so it’s actually improved the live show, if anything. He’s got a really amazing range, so as far as writing, it’s been like a breath of fresh air. I quite often write a song and think, Okay, I’d like it to be down here and go right up to here in parts, but obviously not every singer can sing everything that you’d like them to. But with Marc on this new record, there’s definitely a wider range of vocals which, as far as writing, has made it quite cool. We can actually go there now, where maybe in the past I might not have been able to go so high or so low or something like that. There’s definitely a lot more variety, for sure.”

Read the entire interview at Roadrunner Records

Dragonforce released their new album, The Power Within, in the UK on April 15th via the band’s own Electric Generation Recordings, distributed by Essential Music. The album was released in North American on April 17th - via Roadrunner Records. Check out a new album preview below:

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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.

A digital and vinyl version have also been released, 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: