I DRAGONFORCE sul New York Times

La notizia è di portata storica... l'heavy metal si conquista le pagine di uno dei quotidiani più prestigiosi del mondo! Il 4 Ottobre, infatti, il New York Times ha dedicato un'intera pagina alla recensione del concerto dei Dragonforce.
Purtroppo. però, non è tutto oro quel che luccica: se da una parte fa piacere che si parli della grandiosa band di Herman Li, leggendo attentamente l'articolo (che riporto di seguito), si nota una forte dose di ironia e scetticismo nei confronti dei metallari, ancora visti secondo gli stereotipi di capelloni e corna diaboliche. Del concerto si parla bene, insomma, ma si spala spazzatura su tutto quel che ci sta intorno, band compresa. Ma in fondo, non si dice che non importa se di un argomento si parla bene o male, l'importante è che se ne parli?
Il pubblico italiano avrà la possibilità di giudicare da sè negli imminenti concerti dei Dragonforce, il 5 Novembre al New Age di Roncade (TV) ed il 6 Novembre all'Alcatraz di Milano.Ecco l'articolo del NY Times:

Warp-Speed Guitars, and Some Nonstop Silliness
By KELEFA SANNEH

"If you're not louder, we're going to play all our ballads in a row." That was Sam Totman, one of the two warp-speed guitarists in the metal band DragonForce, issuing a dire threat. The occasion was a sold-out concert at the Nokia Theater, and the audience looked like any other metal audience: lots of men and a handful of women, cheering and raising devil-horn salutes. One difference, though. If you turned away from the stage and scrutinized the crowd, you would have noticed that nearly everyone was grinning. It's hard to imagine any other reaction to DragonForce, a Britain-based band known for goofy exuberance and, even more, for hyper-technical guitar solos; "shredding" seems too mild a word for the fleet-fingered work of Mr. Totman and the other lead guitarist, Herman Li. Though the band was formed (under the name Dragon Heart) in 1999, it was a spot on this summer's Ozzfest Tour that helped earn DragonForce a sizable American following. The most recent DragonForce album, a pulp-and-camp confection called, "Inhuman Rampage" (Roadrunner), has sold more than 60,000 copies in America. The band members did it with plenty of help, too, from the Internet. Their MySpace site has nearly 130,000 friends. (By comparison, the top-selling band Nickelback has just over 180,000.) And their geeky virtuosity plays well on YouTube, which has an active community of guitar nerds. A one-minute video of Mr. Li and Mr. Totman trading impossibly fast solos, from a song called "Through the Fire and Flames," has been viewed nearly half a million times. (The fretwork is astonishing, but what's even better is watching Mr. Totman swig a beer while Mr. Li plays.) There were plenty of solos on Friday night, surrounded by songs that drew equally from revered 1980's power-metal bands and from somewhat less revered arena-rock acts. (Mr. Totman has named Bon Jovi as one influence among many.) The band's lead singer is ZP Theart, whose wailing voice, mane of hair and unplaceable accent (he is, in fact, a white guy from South Africa) convey an impression of bargain-bin grandeur. All night, he made use of a dirt-cheap special effect: he sprayed the audience with bottled water. With those half-familiar melodies ("Through the Fire and Flames" borrows a snippet from the Eagles' "Hotel California"), those shameless songs (one highlight was a galloping run through "Soldiers of the Wasteland"), the nonstop shredding (nearly every song gave Mr. Li and Mr. Totman a chance to play dazzlingly fast runs in unison) and the equally nonstop silliness (at one point Mr. Totman asked for the house lights; "We like looking at loads of dudes," he explained), this band has found a way to make metalheads smile without making them smirk. The band's popularity is also a rebuke to the heavier, tougher, more guttural sound that came to dominate metal in the 1990's; caterwauling was out and grunting was in; mosh-friendly rhythmic breaks seemed more exciting than high-flying solos. The rise of DragonForce suggests that no subgenre, no matter how risible, can remain obsolete forever. It will inevitably come roaring ? or, in this case, wailing ? back, faster, more singleminded and more shameless than ever.

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