And therein lies the problem with Extreme Power Metal. Instead, it is a six and a half minute slogfest where interesting riffs occasionally appear. “Cosmic Power of the Infinite Shred Machine” is without a doubt the greatest power metal song title ever and I expected it to be utterly fantastic. Unfortunately this does not last the entire album or even until the next song. But….it is an infectious and catchy slab of power metal cheese. It is a cheesier than normal pop metal sounding power metal song that sounds like 80% of the bands other songs. Dragonforce’s sound has always incorporated the video game sounds of the 8 Bit era in their guitar work, and the mood of the music has always been happy and positive, but “Highway to Oblivion” cranks it up a few notches. Well looking at the amazing album art and diving into the first song “Highway to Oblivion,” we are sent back to the 1980s. How does their eighth album, appropriately named Extreme Power Metal, hold up to the rest of their discography? For a band that many metalheads complain about for having written the same song for their entire career, Dragonforce has become one of the more diverse power metal bands that emerged in the 2000s. Mostly known for their 2006 breakthrough “Through the Fire and the Flames,” Dragonforce has had an interesting career that saw them find their niche of power metal (Valley of the Damned and Sonic Firestorm) turn into a Mach 5 power metal band (Inhumane Rampage and Ultra Beatdown), reinvigorate themselves with a new singer and returning to their roots of the first two albums, (The Power Within), and finally experimenting with thrash metal and writing nothing but mostly mid-tempo metal songs (Maximum Overload and Reaching Into Infinity). Somehow it has been twenty years since Herman Li and Sam Totman formed the band that became Dragonforce.
Review Summary: Plodding along one 80's influenced song at a time
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