Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Dragonforce
Label: Ear Music Records
Released: 2014
Length: 49:33
Rating: 3.5/5
Dragonforce is a band where you know exactly what you’re getting with every new release. Their sixth studio album, »Maximum Overload«, doesn’t exactly herald the birth of a new galaxy in the band’s fixed musical vision and signature constants. Nine originals and one cover make up a record that lays out classic Dragonforce vocabulary right from the opener, The Game, which came out this July as a single and video. With it, the band smashed their own speed record again, since Dragonforce clocked it as the fastest song of their career so far. With that, the guys topped the record held by Fallen World from the band’s previous studio album, »The Power Within« (2012).
The years roll by, and the band keeps cranking out their trademark »Supernintendo metal« sound, which rides on the springs of jaw-dropping technical speed and polish, the finger-twisting guitar wizardry of the Sam Totman / Herman Li tandem. New vocalist Marc Hudson has definitely found more expressiveness this time. He joined the band right before the recording of »The Power Within« in 2012, so back then the songs weren’t yet optimally tailored to his throat. This time it’s different. Over two years the band has grown again in a real team spirit, and Hudson handles the songs far more effectively, with his theatrical »pomp« explosiveness, melodic purity and sculpted vocals. The songs deliver one ravenous bombastic blast after another and peak in big singalong choruses. Written to fit the fanbase like a glove. Tried and tested.
And yet. Novelties, novelties. Though they’re minor nuances of little consequence, the first thing you notice is that the new album sounds a bit »deeper« and »thicker«. That’s down to the production, which for the first time in their career the guys handed over to an »outsider«. The producer’s helm was taken by none other than Jens Bogren, the renowned Swedish sound engineer who has, among other things, shaped the sound of Opetn and Katatonia. Given how predictable the well-worn template of ultra-fast playing is, though, the shaking sea of notes soon starts to tire the listener out and drain their energy. The same goes for the one-dimensional rhythms, which know only the top-speed torpedo in the relentless march of the double bass drum pedals. And yet this time the band has come up with a bit more concision in how they approach song structure and the feel of the album. So the welcome detours from the band’s predictable tricks (though not from the genre’s genericness) are Three Hammers, Symphony of the Night and The Sun Is Dead. The mid-tempo of the first one is a real balm for the ears, and the excellent Mark Hudson gets plenty of attention and use out of it, since the singer finally gets decent room to steal the spotlight from the relentless guitar chopping. Symphony of the Nigt also surprises with a leap in atmosphere in its calmer middle section. Evidently the band has finally started to put more attention, more time and more energy into polishing the songs. So it’s not just reflexive kinetics following the basic premise we know from Dragonforce, which goes »Play as fast as you can, but keep the math of melodic predictability«, because Maximum Overload finally brings a few small deviations.
The rest of the album puts things back where they were, in a place we know all too well with Dragonforce. With the run of Defenders, Extraction Zone and City of Gold, the listener is once again thrown into confusion, since they’ve heard a very similar song from this band before but can’t remember when or where! One more treat is tacked onto the tail end of the album. A cover of Johnny Cash’s Ring of FIre. Given the many remakes Cash’s original has been through over the years, the version Dragonforce have adopted into their musical dossier is a hugely successful experiment, and it brings loads of fun in the closing moments of this album.
Yet another textbook Dragonforce record, with three or four detours that bring a bit of freshness to a staked-out template that refuses to change. It reads like little, but it means a lot. After 15 years in action, the band has apparently realized that composing doesn’t just mean bestially raging through the staves at the highest gears, pushing the limits of what’s humanly possible on an instrument. One swallow doesn’t make a summer, and the deviations on »Maximum Overload« are minor, but still. Apparently the guys can slow down, even if just for a moment or two. In these deviations lies the hope that Dragonforce will get bolder with their songwriting experiments in the future, maybe there’s even some room to bring a bit of emotion back to life. In the grand sum of all sacred irony, what always saves this band’s skin is the fact that they serve up genericness and unoriginality at such a staggering speed that, on this planet and in their genre, it belongs to the band alone.
Lineup
Marc Hudson – vocals, backing vocals
Herman Li – guitar, backing vocals
Sam Totman – guitar, backing vocals
Vadim Pruzhanov – keyboards, piano, backing vocals
Frédéric Leclercq – bass guitar, backing vocals
Dave Mackintosh – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Matt Heafy (Trivium) – vocals on Defenders, No More and The Game
Clive Nolan (Arena, Pendragon) – backing vocals
Emily Ovenden – backing vocals
Production
Jens Bogren
Tracklist
1. The Game
2. Tomorrow’s Kings
3. No More
4. Three Hammers
5. Symphony of the Night
6. The Sun is Dead
7. Defenders
8. Extraction Zone
9. City of Gold
10. Ring of Fire
