During an interview with Paul Reed Smith for PRS Guitars, DragonForce guitarist and co-founder Herman Li discussed the band's beginnings, and how they were laughed off as cheesy and too over-the-top by the majority of the metal scene at the time.

DragonForce released their first allbum, Valley Of The Damned, in 2003.

Li: "When we started the band, playing guitar solos, any kind of technical, melodic music - with melodic singing - was kind of being laughed at a lot around the world, especially in England and America. People laughed at us: 'Oh, you guys play solos; that's so yesterday. Who cares?' And, 'You guys have singing; that's so cheesy.' So what happened is it actually made us do more of everything that people were laughing at us for. We made double the amount of guitar solos, made it more melodic. It was kind of like an 'F.U.' way to say, 'You don't like what we play? We're gonna go an extra mile and take it to another level to the extreme.' That's what happened, and as the albums went on, we took it to another level.

People didn't really like it at the beginning. They thought, 'This is too fast, too much guitars.' But slowly, the world kind of turned around and we were the only people at that time that went up with that kind of extreme guitar playing on to the mainstream; it kind of exploded. What defined our sound was going against the grain of what was popular at that time."

DragonForce recently dropped a new video today as a special holiday surprise. Inspired by Skyrim, the epic clip for "The Last Dragonborn" can be viewed below.

"The Last Dragonborn" is the first DragonForce music video to feature new bassist, Alicia Vigil, who checked-in from the road with the following comment: "It's been an honor and an incredible experience playing with these guys the last few years. I'm excited to be a part of their upcoming album with them, plus continue touring - and everything else in between - as an official DragonForce member!"

(Photo - Alice Baxley)