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Isbjørn · 03-31-2014, 08:06 AM

Briks listens to an entire Dragonforce album to see if it is a rewarding experience

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Oh and to Briks, obviously you should make up your own mind, but listening to an entire Dragonforce album is probably not going to be a very rewarding experience. All the songs sound pretty much exactly the same: weedly weedly verse/chorus, weedly weedly verse/chorus, even more weedly weedly solo that lasts for at least two minutes (I've counted), and then weedly weedly verse/chorus. Granted, plenty of bands do this but Dragonforce make an art form out of putting as little variety as possible into their albums. Honestly there's probably about as much variety on one of their albums as on a death metal album.

Artist: Dragonforce
Album: Valley of the Damned
Year: 2003
Chronological position: Debut album
Genre: Power metal

Since Batty told me that I should make up my own mind, that's exactly what I'm going to do, and I'll do that by listening to an entire Dragonforce album. I chose Valley of the Damned, since it's their debut album and I like debut albums, they show the band at an early stage, before the members get sick of making music/sell out/change their style to the worse.

The first of October, 2012, I received a message from one of my friends, whose taste in music seems to develop in about the same direction as mine and with whom I started the metal album club. The message translates into something like this: Dude, if you want to hear someone who's sick at power metal, search on YouTube: 'Through the Fire and the Flames'. Watch it all, you'll be impressed. If I am to be completely honest with you, I was a bit impressed. The band played an insane speed, and it was very melodic, so I decided to check out some more of this then-new-to-me subgenre called “power metal”. I soon forgot about Dragonforce, before even bothering to hear an entire album of theirs. But no matter whether I'll hate them, love them, or think they're okay after listening to their debut, I'll have to credit them for introducing me to power metal and maybe even making me a fan of metal in general, just because of one song that I thought was “pretty cool”.

Halfway through:
Wow, the guitarwork on this album is amazing! These guys are brilliant songwriters, and all the lyrics up until now have been topnotch. The song “Starlight” is such a hard-hitting ballad, I feel that I can relate to it very much... like as if it's written just for me. I'm being sarcastic, of course. A thing I think is funny, though, is how much “Starlight” reminds me of “California King Bed” by Rihanna. Metal.

Finished:
I'm sorry for not listening to you, Batty. This was garbage. It's sad that something like this, an album made by mislead poseurs, can pass as power metal, a True Metal subgenre, when it really should be called “speedy nintendo mallcore”. The synth is gross, and there's way too much of it. The lyrics are repetitive and unoriginal. Half of the album length is made up of wanky chiptune solos. There is one good thing about that last bit, though: more solos mean less lyrics. This was 52 minutes wasted.

What I will do now:
Cleanse my mind with Nirvana and celebrate that I'm done with this.