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Through the Fire and Flames

Credit goes to the folks at Punknews.org for pointing this out: CRACKED's Five Most Unintentionally Funny Albums of 2006. Albums by My Chemical Romance, the Mars Volta and Jibbs are listed, but the one that I find very appealing (even with all the silliness) is DragonForce's Inhuman Rampage. A video for "Through the Fire and Flames" is included and I've watched this video a handful of times. I gotta say, I like this song.

Yes, these guys have an Iron Maiden meets Swedish metal vibe. Yes, these guys sing about pain, burning, darkness, freedom, flames and fighting over and over again on the album. Yes, there are about seven guitar solos in "Through the Fire and Flames" alone. Yes, this is pure guitar wankery, but damn, this stuff is tuneful (to my ears at least).

A few months ago, a friend of mine who came up through the same post-hardcore/emo/pop-punk stuff that I did, was so excited to see DragonForce play live. As a matter of fact, he changed his MySpace username to say that he was seeing these guys. This was the same person that sang praises of the Judas Priest/Iron Maiden-like 3 Inches of Blood last year. I asked him if he seriously liked this stuff and he said yes. Slowly, I've understood why.

Make no mistake, I'm well aware that this stuff is insanely goofy, but it's not like this stuff is Overkill or Warrant. I know I could never play songs like these on guitar or drums, but I'm OK with that. This kind of tuneful speed metal isn't that far removed from the blazing pop-punk of Strung Out, a band I have loved for almost ten years now. As long as the material is tuneful (including the solos), that's fine by me.

Did I ever think I would praise stuff like this? Absolutely not. It's not as dense as something like Tom Waits, Scott Walker or the Beach Boys, but this stuff is no joke for me

Comments

Eric said…
I'm not posting Dragonforce. Nope. :)
9:08 PM
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