Given that the vast majority of the so called ‘rock’ audience here in the UK remain blissfully unaware of the whole symphonic power metal scene on the continent, London is probably the last place you’d expect to find a band striving to put Britain on the map. However, that’s exactly what the hugely talented DRAGONFORCE are attempting to do. Signed to the influential Sanctuary Music Group, last year’s ‘Valley Of The Damned’ debut certainly caused quite a stir throughout Europe and beyond, and with sophomore effort ‘Sonic Firestorm’ poised to take things to the next level, we could well be witnessing a clarion call to arms to strike a blow for the birthplace of metal. DAVE COCKETT caught up with Hong Kong born guitarist Herman Li recently to find out what makes the band tick.

It seems unlikely that a bunch of musicians from as far afield as Hong Kong and South Africa, the Ukraine and UK should meet up at all, let alone in a relative backwater like London . "Well, I was playing in another band with Sam (Totman) before this, " admits Herman, " … before Dragon force, and it all sort of just grew from there. We found our vocalist ZP (Theart) through an ad in Metal Hammer … he was looking for a band, and the ad said he was into Skid Row, Dream Theater, Queensryche, Helloween … and it was actually the first time that we found somebody who could sing that sort of stuff, ha, ha! As for Vadim (Pruzanhov), I met him in a rock club down the West End. So whilst the mix of nationalities might seem a little improbable at first, the scene down here now is such that it’s becoming pretty normal , you know, you meet all sorts of people, it’s getting much more diverse."

That’s as may be, but given the almost total apathy of both the press and record companies to the type of music Dragonforce play, you’ve either got to be pretty brave or pretty stupid to start a band. "Yeah, I know what you mean," Herman laughs. "I’ve always been listening to bands like Harem Scarem, you know, all that hard rock stuff and melodic metal, which no one likes in the UK anyway, ha, ha! So in some ways it was kind of like a rebellion, you know, to say ‘We don’t really care what you think, we’ll do what we want to do anyway.’ There’s long guitar solo’s, and melodic singing, and all that kind of stuff in our material … I mean, I always wanted to do it, but we couldn’t do it until we found ZP, that’s kind of what I was saying earlier."

When the band started back in ’99, you actually went out under the Dragonheart banner, why the change of name? "Just because there was another band called that at the time," Herman explains, "and a record label called that, and two movies … everybody knows about one movie, but there’s actually another ‘Dragonheart 2’. I actually prefer Dragonforce myself, I think it sounds better."

Recorded under the aegis of Threshold guitarist Karl Groom at Thin Ice studios in Surrey, the original Dragonforce demo had a song which turned into one the most downloaded tracks of all time on MP3.com. "Yeah," Herman muses, "the demo was downloaded something like half a million times, which came as quite a surprise really. Karl was the first choice for us … I’ve known Threshold since the ‘Clone’ tour. I saw them play down the Astoria 2, and I know they did the ‘Awake’ tour with Dream Theater and stuff like that, and when I heard the record, you know, it was obvious that he was the guy we wanted to do our stuff. He’s a great producer, gets a really great sound."

With the demo breaking all records on MP3.com, it was only a matter of time before word would spread to the record companies. "It all happened pretty fast," admits Herman, "because when we were first approached by the guys at Sanctuary, the demo had only been out for a month or so, and by that time we’d already been contacted by some other labels. We’d also go over to France to see bands because there was nothing coming over here back then, you know, and that’s how I met the guy at the French label. He told me to send a demo over to Sanctuary because they’d worked together on various projects in the past … still do now in fact as far as I know. He thought it strange that some guy would come over from the UK to listen to that sort of stuff, let alone be in a band that played it, ha, ha! S that’s kind of how the whole deal got started, and then we eventually took a year and a half to close negotiations!"

That’s seems an awful long time for a new band to spend negotiating a deal? "There was a … I dunno, maybe it’s because I’m kind of annoying," Herman deadpans, "kinda picky in a way, you know, ha, ha! We actually had quiet a few offers during that time just to get it done and recorded, but with Sanctuary, they wouldn’t sign us until they’d seen that band live, and that’s what I believe in anyway. The band has to be able to play live, and they saw us about five or six times before they said ‘Yeah, this band can play’, and they also wanted to hear all the songs we planned to put on the album, not just a few demos. All the kind of things I would have expected from labels, they did it. The other labels just said ‘Yeah okay, we’ll sign it’, you know. It’s like there’s this kind of rush thing to get your band signed, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be like that. I think if you can kind of establish that you’re different from the other bands, keep doing what you do and not get distracted, there’ll be a scene for you all the time."

Breaking the mould however is nothing new to Dragonforce, an early baptism of fire coming when they supported Stratovarius on their debut UK show, followed by a bunch of dates with Halford. "I think the Stratovarius thing was only something like our fourth show with that particular line up," recalls Herman, "because our keyboard player dropped out at that point. He didn’t want to do the tour, so we did it without a keyboard player – the whole Halford tour and Stratovarius."

Must be a little daunting supporting bands like Halford and Stratovarius that early on in your career? "Yeah, I mean, the first Halford show we were shitting ourselves," Herman laughs, " you know, when we looked out at the crowd at JB’s in Dudley, it was like ‘Fuck me!!’. That first show was really hard, I remember how we were all kind of really nervous before we went out on stage, but then the second show and the third show, we were just fine. After a while the adrenalin kicks in and you kind of go into autopilot, you know. I mean, we still get completely hyped up, screaming and stuff before we go onstage, but once a gig starts … when you finish it it’s actually like a dream, you don’t remember that much from it, it all goes kind of blurred … for me anyway."

After making waves on the underground scene for a number of years, debut album ‘Valley Of The Damned’ finally surfaced about twelve months ago. "We got a lot of great press for that album," offers Herman proudly, "all across Europe, and especially in parts of Asia. The UK we’re still kind of slowly picking up, people talked about it when it came out, but not that much. Great reviews …I think in Sweden we have a great following and things like that, so we did a few shows out there. Japan was just mad really, but to be able to play there on a first album … you normally only get to do that if you’re a known band after two, or maybe even three albums, or on a first album if you’re like a new band but made up of known members .. but unknown bands going in and making it, that was really a surprise, especially when you consider that their economy isn’t what it used to be."

With the debut picking up such positive feedback, there must have been a mixture of fear and anticipation when it came around to writing for the follow up? "Basically, we didn’t know if we were all that bothered about issuing another album so soon," Herman admits, "but then finally, one night Sam and I were talking, and we thought ‘Well, we’ve got all these great ideas here, and if we don’t do it now, maybe someone else might come up with the same ideas and get there before us’. And the we got to thinking that although the debut was only released last year, some of the songs are two or three years old, so then it seemed the right thing to do."

"So we started playing around with what we had," Herman continues, "demoing stuff here and there, and we said ‘Yeah, that’s it. These are the songs that are gonna work for us, these are the songs which are gonna kick the ‘Valley Of The Damned’ album right into touch.’ Already we had this next evolution there, you know, the band had moved on … so we decided at that point to do it, even though we weren’t even finished with the tour for the first album, ha, ha! We basically toured the same songs for three years .. I mean, from the Stratovarius time, all the way to Japan … it was quite successful to be able to do that. Almost like Guns ‘N’ Roses doing a world tour, ha, ha! But we were laughing about how we wrote these songs from day one, and we finished it in Japan four years later, ha, ha!"

It’s always a balancing act though with a successful debut as to just how far you can move forward without turning people off what they liked in the first place. "The way we do it," explains Herman, "is that we pretty much try to break the boundaries as much as possible, and we kind of said to each other when we were doing the guitars ‘Maybe this is too technical’, so we had to take a risk and make it less so. There’s so many other bands doing that technical stuff that there’s really no point, you know, and although we love all that, other people might find it just crap … guitar wanking as you say in this country, ha, ha! But then we thought ‘NO, we’ll just leave it because that’s part of us, that’s the risk we’ll have to take to do our own thing’. In a way, this new album is like the first album pushed up to another level, we didn’t want to move to far away because we always want to keep the same Dragonforce style on every single song. That’s why there’s always similarities between all the songs … it’s kind of a consistent Dragonforce sound, it’s not like a compilation album approach that so many bbands seem to adopt these days."

Hang on a minute, surely the more light and shade you can introduce into your material the greater the overall dynamic, and the greater the overall dynamic, the better the end result … at least from a listeners perspective. "Yeah, but you can do all that and still keep the same style all the way through," argues Herman, "I think the light and shade should come within the context of the song itself, sort of variety in each song if you like, but not still sounding like the same band. For me, too many bands sound like they’re trying to be half a dozen different bands on their albums because they try to cover too many different styles. Why can’t you have each song with an up-tempo groove and big riffs all the way, so long as you present it with some contrast within the song itself?"

Fair point, but it’s a lesson the thrash brigade learned pretty quickly twenty years ago, if you want any sort of longevity in this game, diversity is the key.

The main writer in the band would appear to be Sam, with the others chipping in the odd idea here and there. "Sam is a very active songwriter," nods Herman, "so he’s written most songs on both albums. I wrote a couple of the songs on ‘Valley Of The Damned’, and I wrote two more for this one, and Vadim also came in with one song.. But we always kind of work together on the songs as a band anyway, so whoever actually writes the songs, we always go through this long group process with everybody before we come up with the final, finished article. So it’s definitely more of a group writing thing, but there’s always an initial spark from somebody."

A system that obviously works for the band. "Erm …," Herman muses, "it works well because the way we write songs, it never actually finishes. Say we start writing a song in January, and the album is supposed to be recorded in October, the songwriting process won’t actually finish until October. In the studio you’re always writing, always tinkering around with different ideas until the very last minute. There’s a saying that you’re supposed to make a few songs on the album un-catchy, just to make the catchy songs sound better, but we don’t believe in that formula. I heard some producer say that you make one or two fillers, just to make some songs sound better, but we believe you should always strive to make each song the best you can."

As with the debut, ‘Sonic Firestorm’ was once again recorded with Threshold man Karl Groom. "Karl was definitely the number one choice again," agrees Herman, "we decided that as soon as we knew we would go back in to record the second album. And this time we even brought Richard (West) in from Threshold. He took part in the mixing and the recording of the vocals, so we really got a good team working on this album. I think they’re undoubtedly so underrated both as a band and as producers."

Although the album won’t actually be released until the middle of April, the Sanctuary PR machine has been in full swing for a good couple of months now. "We started doing the promotion for this album back in January," Herman says, "and it just hasn’t stopped since, ha, ha. I did a promo trip all round Europe in January before I went on the Japanese tour, and then I came back home and it all just carries on. I’ve had interviews pretty much every day since then."

That must be a little wearing after a while with people asking the same questions again and again? "Depends really," Herman shrugs, "you do tend to get a lot of the same questions when people don’t like the album at all, they just seem to be doing it because the record label has such a strong promotion. But most of them have been good really. The UK has always been good interviews, and Japan … they always ask interesting questions too."

Once the album hits the streets, Dragonforce will barely have chance to draw breath before the whole tour circuit kicks off again. "We’ve got a 39 show tour with WASP," Herman explains, "which will take us pretty much everywhere in Europe. We’re gonna hit the UK first, starting in Scotland and then working our way down to London.. That’s in three weeks time, so we’d better start doing some rehearsals, ha, ha! No really, we’ve got this theory that if you rehearse less, then you’ll be fresher when it comes round to the actual tour itself."

Whilst rehearsals may not yet have started in earnest, the band at least have a pretty good idea of the songs they want to play. "The set list will be different for different countries," Herman offers. "In the UK, for example in Scotland where they’ve never seen us play before, they want to see the debut stuff being played again and a few new songs. So it depends on where we are … London for example, when we get down to London we’ll play more of the new stuff because we’ve played the old stuff there quite a lot. Like Sweden we’ve played there before, and Germany … the set list we’ve picked for rehearsal has many more songs than we can actually fit in to a single support set. And also, because we’re doing 39 shows, you can’t play the same set every single night, you’d just get bored, ha, ha!"

Beyond that there’s a string of summer festival appearances, tours in the UK (this time as headline act) and Japan to consider, and the tantalising possibility of a trip to the States … the gods it would seem are smiling on Dragonforce.