Scribed by Sandre the Giant
After their debut full length came out just the year before, Dragonforce hit back immediately in 2004 to capitalise on their newfound popularity with ‘Sonic Firestorm’, their first turn in the direction of ‘extreme power metal’. This is where the speed began, the insane speed & epically catchy combination that turned Dragonforce into stars on their next album. to be fair, Guitar Hero probably helped there to, but Dragonforce were already proving before that that they were no flash in the pan novelty act.
Opener ‘My Spirit Will Go On’ is the perfect confluence point of their previous classic power metal sound, and the gradually ramping up of speed and technicality that was to come. It’s one of their all time classics, a song that got me into the band in the first place, and one to this day still grips me tightly in its ultra catchy fists. It’s what Dragonforce do better than almost anyone else, massive choruses, huge hooks and blinding speed and technicality. A genuine joy to experience, and while later on that technicality began to get a little ridiculous, on ‘Sonic Firestorm’ there is the perfect balance between crazed fretwork and anthemic metal bangers. I mean, the solos are all still utterly crazy, but when you have killer tracks like ‘Fury of the Storm’, power ballad extraordinaire ‘Dawn of a New World’ and my own favourite, ‘Soldiers of the Wasteland’, you’ll struggle to pull your fists down from the sky. You can see the influences of Stratovarius and Helloween coming through, and Dragonforce in turn would continue that tradition and influence the next generations of power metallers.
Dragonforce became a bit of a meme, a bit of a joke for a while there with the whole Guitar Hero thing and whether they have really suffered because of it, or reached a whole new level of fans is up to each person’s interpretation. For me, ‘Inhuman Rampage’ was the limit of their ‘extreme power metal’ philosophy and I had to take a little break from them. But I’ve never taken a break from ‘Sonic Firestorm’, an album for which there is no more apt title. Fiery, beautiful and unstoppably fast, this is the true prime of Dragonforce. The real pinnacle of their creativity and everything since has been trying to be as good as this, Sometimes they’ve matched it, sometimes not. But most bands would kill for one stunner in their discography like this. Most metal fans will probably try and be ‘too cool’ for Dragonforce. But no one can claim that this isn’t power metal perfection, even twenty years on.
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The Killchain 