Metal Wani’s Laura Vezer had a chat with DRAGONFORCE guitarist Sam Totman.
He discussed the upcoming record ‘Reaching into Infinity’, why the band haven’t changed the songwriting style, his opinion on creative process for Dragonforce and sharing songwriting sessions with bassist Fredric as compared to writing all the songs as done in the past.
He throws light on writing faster songs, balancing the pace with few ballads, his opinion on Marc Hudson‘s vocals on the record and why they opted to record some vocal parts with bassist Fredric which Marc Hudson or Ex-singer ZP Heart couldn’t execute in the past. He also talks about theatrical aspect of the record, Dragonforce’s organic nature of songwriting, inspiring musicians throughout the career, touring and more.
Here are some of the excerpts:
I’ve been lucky enough to have a sneak peak at ‘Reaching into Infinity’, and I really like it! Tell us more about it!
Sam: Well it’s obviously very amazing and everyone should go and buy it! We haven’t changed too much, but we’re not too boring. I don’t want to say same old routine, because we’ve definitely got some new stuff on there, but we haven’t changed too much; it’s not like we’ve turned into St Anger or anything like that! If you like DragonForce, you’ll probably still like us, and if you didn’t like us before, you probably still won’t! So there you go!
I recently read a release from Fred, the bass guitarist, who managed most of the songwriting for ‘Reaching into Infinity’…he said that it was a challenging process this time around, and pushed the band outside of their comfort zone. What can you share about the creative process for DragonForce? How does it work for you guys?
Sam: The first five albums I did most of them on my own. You can’t keep doing the same thing forever, and eventually you’ll run out of ideas. The last album I was starting to run out of ideas. You can’t keep doing the same thing forever, and Fred had a to of ideas, so we thought we’d write some stuff together. For ‘Maximum Overload’ we both wrote that together. We did every song from scratch. For this album we were going to do the same thing again. In the end I did about 4 songs and he did 8. I think he just wrote his fast than me! I was in his garage doing my songs, and he was in his room doing his, and we were supposed to get together and help each other out, but in the end we just carried on on our own. He ended up with more than I did! In some ways it’s cool because you can really tell that the ones that I’d done are very much old DragonForce style, and the ones that he’s done you can tell that it’s not me doing it. It’s made quite a nice balance in the end, because it’s not just me doing it, it’s us working together. It’s definitely brought some new sounding songs on the album. It still sounds like us; I mean, it’s still the same guys in the band, playing the songs. It’s pretty cool and I think it turned out fine!
Stream The Entire Interview Below:
1 comment
I CAN’T go out and buy it because the PRE-ORDERS AREN’T UP YET!