Review Summary: Dragonforce attempt to introduce new ideas to their familiar sound, and it makes for Dragonforce's best album since Valley of the Damned. Take that as you will.
2012’s The Power Within marks Dragonforce’s first studio effort since 2008’s Ultra Beatdown, which arguably saw Dragonforce at the height of their popularity. 2008 was admittedly a good year for the band, so long as you weren’t counting musicality. The band was still riding on the success of ‘Through The Fire and the Flames’, Ultra Beatdown was released to positive reviews from most critics and a Top-20 spot on the Billboard 200, and the band earned a Grammy nomination for ‘Heroes of Our Time’, which might as well have represented most of Dragonforce’s discography at the time.
This is not 2008 though. This is 2012, which including the doomsday conspiracy theories, billion-dollar superhero blockbusters, and Chris Brown’s slap-fight with Drake has brought us a new Dragonforce album, and with that a new Dragonforce....well, sort of. Former singer ZP Theart is gone and Marc Hudson has picked up the microphone, but the fact remains that not much else has changed within the band. The core songwriting team of Herman Li and Sam Totman has remained the same, so it would be easy to conclude that the sound is still the same with little development in the songwriting department. Still though, could the band manage to pull off something great with some new blood and a little inspiration? Could they break the mold of their stale, lightning-fast, power-metal formula to piece-together a great album?
Almost. With ‘The Power Within’, Dragonforce has crafted their most unique, original album since, well, their debut. However, far too much of the old Dragonforce is still present. A large part of the album is still played at the lightning fast speeds with the same chugging rhythms people have come to love/hate from the band, and there is still a lot of the guitar wanking that has plagued the band’s other releases. As with the other albums, most of the relief to the wankery comes in the form of the singer belting out the band’s other trademark: the cheesiest fantasy-based lyrics imaginable. Lyrics such as “Night after night, for glory we fight,” can be forgiven for the most part though, partly because they fit with the music and partly because the new singer Marc is easily a better, stronger singer than ZP Theart, pulling off some very catchy vocal melodies in songs like Give Me The Night and Cry Thunder. However, Marc’s approach to singing is very limited on this album, and like the guitar playing, becomes redundant midway through. Marc may be a good singer, but he and the band’s songwriters still need to realize that there is more to singing than the cliché voice theatrics and occasional Halford-esque scream.
At other times though, the band genuinely surprises the listener with some of the new ideas they have introduced to their music. Songs like Cry Thunder and Seasons see the band break away from their speed-metal mold to focus on more melodic, mid-tempo compositions which pay off really well. Other songs like Wings of Liberty and Die By The Sword show off the band’s improving compositional skills with the more prominent presence of the keyboards and the bass in the music being more than welcome. The album is still very guitar-centric though, with the keyboards providing mostly supporting parts and the bass’s highlights being reduced to flashy but unmemorable fills in songs like Fallen World and Give Me The Night.
Also with this album comes a new, double-edged sword to Dragonforce’s music. That double-edged sword would be the attempt to introduce more progressive influences to the band’s sound. While other power-metal bands like Blind Guardian can pull this off well, Dragonforce still needs a bit more work in this section. There’s a mixed bag of tricks the band attempts, from using a clean piano intro in Wings of Liberty which misfires but had the potential to work, to Die By The Sword, which features more varied drum work than the other songs and a beautiful transition from the thrashy main portion of the song to a more melodic mid-tempo section. It’s clear that the band has ambition, and that they really want to take themselves more seriously as musicians, but they don’t have enough experience yet to pull it off.
That said, these moments of ambition and variety still represent the highlights of the album, with Cry Thunder and Seasons easily being the best songs. The weakest song is Heart of the Storm, which is the most reminiscent of Dragonforce’s earlier work and falls flat on its face with far-too-repetitive guitar work and not enough catchiness in the singing or the melodies to make it work. The album also ends weakly with an acoustic version of the song Seasons. Despite the fact that the original Seasons is still the best song on the album, the acoustic version just doesn’t work as well, and Marc’s awkward falsetto in the chorus doesn’t help that. The acoustic version of Seasons isn’t horrible by any means, just inconsequential, uninspired, and overall unnecessary.
Ultimately, The Power Within is not just the sound of Dragonforce going through the motions. The Power Within is the sound of improvement on the band’s part, with actual ambition and inspiration shining through for the first time since Sonic Firestorm. The results aren’t always pretty, but for the most part, the album is a fun listen for casual power-metal fans and perhaps the most tolerable the band has ever been in its career.
