During an appearance on a recent episode of The Candid Mic With Fran Strine podcast, DRAGONFORCE guitarist Herman Li was asked if he and fellow DRAGONFORCE founding guitarist Sam Totman are essentially the only actual members of the band, with the other musicians performing and recording with the group as mere “hired guns”. Li responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, Sam and I started the band, and we always did pretty much all the work for it. So, in a way, it hasn’t really changed. It’s just some people’s lives change, and that’s what happens [to cause lineup changes in a band]. And every time we make a change in a band, it’s because we’re trying to make it better. Someone here isn’t happy — they’re not able to give it a hundred percent. They have other things they need to do or they just want a change in their life. And that’s kind of what happens. And it’s normal. It’s like a company. If you’re buying a Nvidia graphics card, someone, an engineer, decides they’re gonna do a different job, are you gonna say, ‘Wow, what’s going on? This GPU is not gonna work.’ Or this camera, someone making this camera. But in a band, because of what you see, who performs, sometimes you think, well, you might have some ideas.”
Regarding how he and his DRAGONFORCE bandmates have adapted to the changes in the music industry over the last couple of decades, Li said: “It has changed a lot. And because the industry is changing… So the story is this: in 2018, we got rid of management, we got rid of everything. Our old business system that was put in place by our old manager, we just kind of got rid of it because it’s, like, ‘Well, this needs to be changed here. This is not working out.’
“I managed the band up until basically the third DRAGONFORCE album [2005’s ‘Inhuman Rampage’], our big hit album. At that time, the band exploded, so me managing the band wasn’t even possible anymore. Especially if someone’s gonna come to me and say, ‘Well, I can manage the band. I work with these other bands.’ Who am I to question to say, ‘I know better than this guy’. So we did that for a number of years, and then I realized, ‘Well, this is not actually any better.’ So now I have the experience, I’m gonna do it. I’ve been doing enough, and I’m sure I can do a better job. So that was the big change. So I can say we had the downtime, unfortunately, through, I believe, mismanagement, because the music hasn’t got worse. And now, luckily, we’re more successful and popular than at that time [during] the ‘Guitar Hero’ explosion. And now we are actually doing better. And funnily enough, that song ‘Through The Fire And Flames’ [from ‘Inhuman Rampage’] just got released on probably one of the biggest video games in the world right now, Fortnite. It came out last week and it’s been an absolute hit. It’s been crazy. I mean, how many people play that game, Fortnite? It’s insane.”
Herman recently confirmed that there are tentative plans for him and his DRAGONFORCE bandmates to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their most commercially successful album, “Inhuman Rampage”, by performing the LP in its entirety on a 2026 tour.
Back in July 2017, “Inhuman Rampage”, which came out in 2006 via Roadrunner, was officially certified gold by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for sales in excess of half a million copies.
“Inhuman Rampage” sold almost 10,000 copies in its first week of release to land at position No. 103 on the Billboard 200 chart. A song from the LP, the aforementioned “Through The Fire And Flames”, received rock radio and Fuse TV airplay and was featured as a playable track (along with “Heroes Of Our Time”) on the videogame “Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock”. The platinum-selling single brought the Grammy-nominated extreme power metal group international acclaim.
In March 2019, the “Through The Fire And Flames” music video reached a new milestone: it surpassed one hundred million views on YouTube — DRAGONFORCE‘s first music video to do so.
Earlier in March, “Through The Fire And Flames” was released as a Jam Track in the video game Fortnite, available to players participating in the game’s new “Spring Raid” event.
“Inhuman Rampage” was the second-to-last album to feature singer ZP “Zippy” Theart, who exited the band in 2010 and was replaced by Marc Hudson.
Only Li and Totman remain from the “Inhuman Rampage” recording lineup. They are joined in group’s current formation by Hudson, drummer Gee Anzalone and bassist Alicia Vigil.
DRAGONFORCE‘s latest album, “Warp Speed Warriors”, was released in March 2024 via Napalm Records.
“Warp Speed Warriors” was produced, mixed and mastered by Damien Rainaud at Mix Unlimited in Los Angeles, California with Totman and Li.
Source: blabbermouth.net
