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In a world gone mad, there’s one thing that remains a constant. Metal. Well, at least according to God-tier shred-lord Herman Li from Dragonforce. Ahead of their upcoming Australian tour, we chatted to the cheery Brit about the recording process of Reaching To Infinity, touring the world and the importance of putting on a damn great rock show.
Dragonforce have such a niche and well loved sound. Going into the recording process for Reaching To Infinity at this point in your career, does the need to buck expectation and ‘surprise’ audiences come to mind?
We started recording last summer, while we were touring we were taking time off in between to record and the was definitely more ‘doing what we want to do’ and not caring, because it’s hard to write music for an ‘imaginary audience’. That’s always been the approach and the new album is out there to prove to ourselves, not to impress anybody, we just want to constantly get better at what we do. We definitely tried to improve the guitar sounds and tones on the new album and we’re always trying to add new elements to our music and progressing and I think that’s really showcased in our live show as well now. We’ve got this massive, epic 12 minute long song which is something we’ve never done before, but it’s still the Dragonforce that you know.
You guys often showcase quite a ‘grandness’ in your album titles like The Power Within and your overall image as a band. How does Reaching To Infinity reflect that?
Reaching To Infinity is talking about music and how metal, in particular provides instant escapism from all the crazy stuff that happens in the world. Music still has a place to take people’s worries away and Dragonforce, the way we do it with our style of music, we try and take the audience ‘away’.
You’re obviously elder statesmen of the metal scene these days. Are there any younger bands you look towards for inspiration in terms of both your live act and recording?
To be honest I don’t really know what’s considered a young band because people are making albums so quickly! Some bands put out 3 albums in 3 years so are they really considered young bands! [Laughs.] I think there are always great musicians coming out, even on YouTube that you don’t really get to see live. Sometimes my friend’s will send me videos to check out and I’ll be like ‘Wow that guy is really good!’. Looking back to the music I listened to growing up and learning guitar all the way through to now, I think there’s always good stuff coming out. My favourite style of music is progressive metal and there aren’t always a lot of people doing it. Even if there are ‘new’ bands doing it they not ‘young’. [Laughs]
Music still has a place to take people’s worries away and Dragonforce, the way we do it with our style of music, we try and take the audience ‘away’.
[HERMAN]
How do find the balance between displaying such slick musicianship and entertainment in your live show?
I believe that having an entertaining show is more is more important than being a ‘showoff’. By having an entertaining show though, you ultimately become a showoff though if that makes sense? [Laughs] So that’s the approach we have, we just like to have fun while we’re playing on stage. We’re obviously serious musicians but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We don’t want to be separate to the audience, we’re just all there together having a good time.
You spent a really large portion of 2016 touring major festivals in Europe and Asia. How have you tailored your live show to each experience?
Festivals are great fun but after doing them for a while, you want to go back to doing headliners. [Laughs]. You have so much more time to work on a headlining show, with festivals every is such a rush. With shows, you get to adjust things and take time. A headlining tour is perfect for Australia right now because the last two times we were here was for Soundwave and we get to play a wider array of songs, it’s more tailored towards the fans.
With such a big back catalogue, how will you go about incorporating the new album into your setlist for the upcoming tour?
We haven’t done a headlining show in Australia for a while, so we’re going to try and incorporate a lot of stuff we wouldn’t of played for a festival, we’ve extended it added to it. We’ll definitely be adding songs from the new album, I believe when we come the album would’ve been out for 2 or 3 weeks.
What can Australian fans expect?
For fans that have never seen us headline a show they’ll be surprised at how we play in a club show. 2009 was our last headliner, we’ve really learnt so much from touring around the world and we’ve improved a lot.
Dragonforce Reaching Into Infinity Australian Tour
Tuesday 20 June – Capitol, Perth 18+
Wednesday 21 June – 170 Russell, Melbourne 18+
Thursday 22 June – The Basement, Canberra 18+
Saturday 24 June – Manning Bar, Sydney 18+
Sunday 25 June – The Triffid, Brisbane 18+
Tickets are on sale now via Destroy All Lines
