Power metal has always been that kind of metal that’s so energizing and inspirational that it’s crafted a community of some of the most dedicated metal fans ever. I kid you not, you’ll see fans dressed as Vikings at power metal shows. So there is a spirit, a soul beating in the power metal world. It gives the music a kind of…well…power. When Dragonforce burst onto the scene in 1999, they cranked their skills into overdrive, supercharging that energy to unheard of levels. But speed doesn’t mean great quality: Dragonforce, for all of their mach speed solos and gatling guns drum rhythms, were so enamored with reaching a new level of power metal energy that they ventured into absurdity. This idea has driven their songwriting for 15 years and with their sixth album Maximum Overload, nothing’s changed. This is Dragonforce, nothing more and nothing less.
Dragonforce are power metal to the most ridiculous and easiest to parody degree. Their music has always been blazingly fast, absurdly intense, and epic to an almost surreal level. They’ve kept this focus over the course of five albums, and this sixth one doesn’t do a single thing to break that tradition. Maximum Overload is Dragonforce being Dragonforce. You have all of the trappings you’d expect from a Dragonforce album: Herman Li’s adrenaline-drenched guitar solos, double-bass pedal stampedes (now run by new drummer Gee Anzalone, who replaced Dave Mackintosh this year), and all of the epic and saccharinely inspirational lyrics you can choke down. For what it’s worth, the music is true to Dragonforce’s ethos: over-the-top power metal that takes the speed of thrash metal like Metallica and the crowd-pleasing bombast of arena rock like Journey. Packing in the folklore inspiration from Dio and some traces of Scandinavian symphonic metal, Dragonforce’s sound has always smashed through opposition, an unrelenting army of power metal fury. Maximum Overload is just as strong as the band’s previous album, 2012’s The Power Within.
But that fury has always been Dragonforce’s most agonizing element: they run this gambit without a trace of restraint. The amount of indulgence in Dragonforce’s music reaches dangerous levels of energized spirit, which makes the formula run its course extremely quickly. The songs have almost no identity individually, so the 15-track album loses much of its steam early on. The band tries to steady the pacing with sharp, mid-tempo breaks in between the mach speed solos, and while these breaks added personality to the band’s more iconic albums like 2006’s Inhuman Rampage, that tactic doesn’t have much longevity on Maximum Overload. All of the battlecries in “No More” and the inspirational lyrics are simply fluff, and the songwriting is so trivial and lackluster that not even some guest vocals from Trivium’s Matt Heafy can give Maximum Overload any extended level of substance. And Dragonforce’s cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”? Skip it. Just skip it.
But there are some shining moments on Maximum Overload. Vocalist Marc Hudson debuted as Dragonforce’s new lead singer on their previous album The Power Within, and though he’s yet to get his own special flow to his vocals, he’s still a strong singer. The notes he hits in “Three Hammers” are extremely high, so there’s certainly a level of virtuosity to his vocals. “The Sun Is Dead” is a higher point, with a nice balance of moods, great uses of synths and vocals, and a superb use of tempo changes. The moments of creativity are poignant, but they only make the completely stale Dragonforce formula all the more noticeable. Maximum Overload is an album so drenched in Dragonforce tropes that it can barely stand, but that tradition, despite its desolation of invention, can still hold up as a very guilty pleasure.
Maximum Overload is Dragonforce. Every single trope and stereotype you might have heard about the band is true and it’s all on display on this record. The music revels in over-the-top epicness, but that source of spirit and energy is wasted on derivative anthems and power metal dryness. The songs don’t have soul, simply sticking to the exact same template the band has pushed for 15 years. But even with that drought of creativity, Dragonforce have a primal and almost poppy appeal. It’s the kind of music that can’t help but exists as a guilty pleasure. It helps that the musicians are still virtuosos. From the speed-of-sound guitar solos, the thunderous drum lines, the ascendant vocals; they have a perverse excitement that will get you headbanging. But as a metal album, Dragonforce are losing the appeal delivered on Inhuman Rampage. Their music is identifiable, but their songs aren’t. Unless their songwriting can get a huge level-up for their next one, their bound to be remembered solely as “that band from Guitar Hero.”
