Dragonforce - Reaching for Infinity

Every time Dragonforce puts out a new album I really hope for it to be good because I think the amount of shit they get for being the Guitar Hero 3 band is unwarranted, and I like power metal. They’ve come close to delivering the extreme gratification of the subgenre they refer themselves as extreme purveyors of. “Seasons” to this day is one of my go-to power metal energizers and probably one of my favorite songs in the genre. But on this one, the band seem to be milking dry udders with songs about the usual power metal clichés about fighting, the sky, flying, standing on the edge, fire, etcetera. They try to pull a few cheap tricks with some more metalcore styled riffs on a few songs and the gruff vocals to match them on “The Edge of the World”, but by the end of the hour it takes to listen to the 11 songs on this album, it feels like having just listened to 11 slight variations of the same several musical ideas. The album does have its moments like the aforementioned epic and its proggy adventuring, and the slight inspiration of “Judgement Day”. The problem with Reaching into Infinity is that a lot of the songs reach for a euphoric sense of empowerment much greater than any of them, even the better ones, can seem to achieve with the same musical battleplan that has only allowed Dragonforce to conquer as far as they have with the help in popularity that infamous video game did give them.

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