Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Dragonforce
Label: Roadrunner Records
Release: 2008
Runtime: 58:16
Rating: 4/5
Sometimes watching a band evolve can be pretty fascinating. “Ultra Beatdown” is the fourth studio album from the fastest band on the planet that can still physically make music with actual bones and muscles. Considering DragonForce are Brits, it’s great to meet a band from a region that long denied the comeback of power metal and the revival of old-school melodic ways of playing heavy metal. Of course, the factor that tipped the scales in favor of any investment is the potential commercial shock value DragonForce can pull off, generic as it all is, simply by playing as hard and as fast as humanly possible.
Given the extreme tremor of the sea of notes and tonalities in the melodies, you can’t really compare individual tracks, because they sound awfully alike. Genericness through and through, then. But it’s covered up by that aggressively fast playing, woven into the song frameworks in a way that keeps the listener constantly thrilled. This time around, that element turned out wildly successful. Why?
The development in this direction was hinted at with “Inhuman Rampage”, but that album was a double-edged sword. On it, DragonForce shed their milk teeth and shook out all their power in a drive to prove themselves, but they also produced seeds that could have taken them “downhill” in the future. Even though it offered a basically excellent starting point for a maturing upgrade, it also felt rather disjointed and, in that respect, could genuinely leave the listener totally baffled. So there was a real danger that DragonForce would sink themselves with the new album in uninventiveness and generic self-parody. “Ultra Beatdown” is proof that the guys skillfully used “Inhuman Rampage” to squeeze the best out of it.
The songs on “Ultra Beatdown” have been polished into sensible wholes that banish any dark thought that a troop of baboons who smoked loads of “crack” in the studio were sitting behind the instruments while the album was being recorded. The new songs feel compact and rounded off. The guys have completely domesticated the raging guitar and keyboard solos and neutralized them inside mini epic suites, which earn that label thanks to lengths between 7 and 8 minutes. The trick lies in the ultra melodicism, with motifs that complement each other very tastefully, and in which the extreme speed the guys unleash through the performance works as the required atmospheric add-on, both pleasantly stunning and shocking the listener. So DragonForce have successfully ditched the element of “forcedness and annoyance” that an approach like theirs, playing all-out, would very quickly and easily fall prey to with just a little less “self-control” when polishing the final shape of the songs.
The band serves up an excellent weave of all the building blocks, a mix written with juicy classical-symphonic arrangements, of songs that are motivically varied yet consistently compact, heads and tails. That’s something bands like Symphony X, Blind Guardian or Rhapsody Of Fire partly developed, and today it’s DragonForce who somehow managed to push it to the extreme, right to the outer physical limits.
“Ultra Beatdown” boasts a very balanced and controlled production. Despite the dominance of the guitar playing, the vocals have still kept the role of an authoritative commander who, with a clean, melodic approach, wide range and the required explosiveness, skillfully keeps taming the unstoppable “puking” of guitar fire. At times the guitar solos have such a thinned-out sound that they seem to be run through synthesizer effects, which they aren’t. Also interesting is the constant embellishment of the solos with tremolo, with an incorrigible sonic effect of “horse neighing”.
With the new album, DragonForce have taken a step that brought them up to a higher level of development. It nicely picks up the seeds of the previous album and serves up a high degree of sense in what is otherwise a more complex approach to DragonForce songwriting. This is a very likely creative climax, one that masterfully combines the aggressive approach of placing playing speed with the arranging itself, and with it DragonForce have delivered a very listenable, highly melodic, quick-to-win-you-over album. As such, it will be massively accessible to any and all ears. Above all, it’s an album that keeps the arrangements sensible, and thanks to the smart implementation of extreme speeds in manual dexterity, it keeps the listener constantly thrilled and entertained.
But keep a safety fuse switched on in your head all the same. Because this album is built on trivial, generic levers, know that it’s awfully predictable and that you’ll quickly “gorge” yourself on it. Thanks to the extreme playing, written by the schoolbook rules, it lacks a tragic mood and is completely castrated in emotional expression. With it, DragonForce simply prove that they’re positive-minded guys who were never wronged in life and who grew up in a safe, lovely childhood in the bosom of their mothers. In that respect, sadly, they are deeply limited artistically, because they never had to fight for certain things in life and those things just happily fell from the sky. Hence the justified fear hanging in the air that the band’s zenith has been reached with “Ultra Beatdown” and that DragonForce will just keep repeating themselves on the next albums. Even being “as fast as you can” in performance gets boring for the listener at some point.
Lineup
ZP Theart – vocals
Herman Li – guitar, backing vocals
Sam Totman – guitar, backing vocals
Vadim Pruzhanov – keyboards, piano, theremin, Kaoss pad, backing vocals
Fr̩d̩ric Leclercq Рbass guitar, backing vocals
Dave Mackintosh – drums, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Clive Nolan – keyboards, backing vocals
Production
Karl Groom, Sam Totman & Herman Lee
Tracklist
1. Heroes of Our Time (7:13)
2. The Fire Still Burns (7:50)
3. Reasons to Live (6:25)
4. Heartbreak Armageddon (7:40)
5. The Last Journey Home (8:12)
6. A Flame For Freedom (5:20)
7. Inside The Winter Storm (8:11)
8. The Warrior Inside (7:14)
