I find dragonforce to be awefully repetitive as far as underlying rhythms and chord progressions go. In addition, Herman Li is not dynamic at all. He basically plays at absurd speeds, volume, and presence at all times. He lacks the ability to create subtle, intricate soundscapes that the untrained ear would not hear, as EVH obviously can. His playing style seems to stem from pure muscle memory and not at all from creativity. I can't really tell if he actually knows music theory, or just comes up with cool sounding parts over hours and hours of tinkering, but in actuality, he does play in a lot of interesting modes and wether it's digitally altered or not, he does play really fast. I hate his tone. It is brash and muddy.
Everyone is forgetting about EVH's use of the pinch harmonic. everyone uses that now.
by no means would I consider Van Halen the best, but he definitely pwns Herman Li.
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