Heroes of Our Time

I don't want to be a snob. I prefer Duke Ellington and Burt Bacharach but when I hear something modern that has some muscle I'll pass it along. Dragonforce is like a dream come true for every aspiring 15 year old shred guitarist. And that's enough because no one buys more merchandise with dragons on it than 15 year old boys. The name itself seems like it was picked by a teenager. "And I want two incendiary guitarists and a singer with a voice like a demon." Ok.
Where Lamb of God dominates the percussion side of metal, Dragonforce has no equal on the six (12) strings. These are sick sick solos. Herman Li is the long haired guitarist using something called a hot hand wah filter (that black ring of power on his picking hand) Look close to see what effect he gets from it like a magician coaxing screams from his instrument without picking a string. I almost want to get one.
I swear these lyrics read like they were assembled randomly from a fortune cookie factory in Hell's Chinese restaurant. Or maybe they went through Metallica's shredded garbage and pieced a song together.

"Across the endless sands,
Through the fields of our despair,
Dream for all eternity, we stand, yeah,"

Yeah? Yeah, what? Dream for all eternity? What does that mean? Endless sands? Fields of our despair? This isn't even good enough to pass as a B-side song by Boston or Queen. None of the lyrics mean anything except as vague metaphors to teenage boys. Again, in heavy metal, that's enough. Stairway to heaven is no different. It's junk food for the guitar hero generation and I like it. Rock n roll demons and fly through falling stars, ride on flaming meteors of your ego.

Here are the lyrics since I couldn't understand anything the singer said. Be warned, if you want poetic expression of Yeats or Kipling then keep looking...this is the stuff of dreamy teenagers scribbling lyrics in lined notebooks as tattoos for paper dragons and plastic demons:

Lost in a dream, finally it seems,
Emptiness and everlasting madness,
See the sadness grow, watching as we know,
Blinded for our journey for the world,
Call for us, the power in all of us,
So far beyond the blackened sky tonight...
Glorious, forever more in us,
We are victorious, and so alive.

(Chorus)
We'll all find our sacrifice tomorrow,
Our journey on towards a brighter day,
Silent tears we left behind, still so far away,
Across the endless sands,
Through the fields of our despair,
Dream for all eternity, we stand, yeah,
Rise above the universe tonight,
Starchaser...

Fly towards the storm, see the world reborn,
Feel the pain inside, the voice, the sorrow,
Across the distant shores, find the open door,
Stand alone, in judgment for tomorrow.

Years of pain still haunt us all, we saw the last sunrise,
Take me home, in freedom, for a lifetime...
Praying on for the silence, and the last tears will blind,
So glorious, this fight inside, united we stand.

(Chorus)
And we'll all find our sacrifice tomorrow,
Our journey on towards a brighter day,
Silent tears we left behind, still so far away,
Across the endless sands,
Through the fields of our despair,
Dream for all eternity, we stand, yeah,
Rise above the universe tonight,
Starchaser...

Free from this world, here for the last time,
Oceans collide inside of us all,
Believe who we are,
The phoenix will guide us,
Freedom will rise once again.

Solos!!

Save us tonight, the last hope for all of us,
Light-years gone by, we're still holding on,
Save us tonight, a star shines in all of us,
Far beyond our lives, still our glory lives on.

(Chorus)
And we'll all find our sacrifice tomorrow,
Our journey on towards a brighter day,
Silent tears we left behind, still so far away,
Across the endless sands,
Through the fields of our despair,
Dream for all eternity, we stand, yeah,
Rise above the universe tonight,
Starchaser...Starchaser...

Our kingdom come, we stand as one,
And we will live for always evermore...