{"id":7079,"date":"2008-08-26T00:00:27","date_gmt":"2008-08-26T00:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=7079"},"modified":"2013-06-01T15:48:24","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T15:48:24","slug":"album-review-dragonforce-ultra-beatdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-dragonforce-ultra-beatdown\/","title":{"rendered":"DRAGONFORCE – Ultra Beatdown (2008) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

DRAGONFORCE
Ultra Beatdown<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nRoadrunner (2008)<\/span>
Rating: 5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Known for their incredibly talented musicianship (anyone played them on Guitar Hero<\/em>?) London-based DragonForce have enjoyed main stage success on both Ozzfest and 2008\u2019s Rockstar Mayhem Festival among other well-publicised tours.<\/p>\n

Ultra Beatdown<\/em> is DragonForce\u2019s fourth opus and, although plenty tongue-in-cheek, with it they firmly establish themselves as one of rock\u2019s most powerful acts. Imagine the Scorpions and Dream Theater in a blender and you have a good idea of what DragonForce offers here. <\/p>\n

The name of the game on Ultra Beatdown<\/em> is bombast. This album is loud, melodic, anthemic, and most of all, insanely fast. The band apparently see no need to ever go any slower than 100mph as evidenced by the songs \u2018Heroes Of Our Time\u2019, \u2018The Fire Still Burns\u2019, \u2018The Warrior Inside\u2019 (which doesn\u2019t even slow down when it hits the \u201cslow part\u201d) and \u2018The Last Journey Home\u2019. Each could easily be a B-side from the Inhuman Rampage<\/em> (2006) album and are likely leftovers from those sessions. If they aren\u2019t leftovers then the band is completely unconcerned with moving their sound forward. I\u2019m going to give them the benefit of the doubt here though. <\/p>\n

Though the vast majority of this album sounds almost exactly the same as their previous works, \u2018Inside The Winter Storm\u2019 manages to capture a groove that, although uncharacteristic, is a nice change of pace from the rest of the album. Likewise, \u2018Heartbreak Armageddon\u2019 offers a lengthy, slow solo that is reminiscent of some of the lesser known 80s hard rock bands soloing (think Badlands and Gorky Park). Fortunately, it doesn\u2019t sound out of place or cheesy. You find yourself thankful for these small moments as they allow the listener a chance to catch a much needed breath. <\/p>\n

Overall, if you are a musician it\u2019s hard to deny the elevated levels of talent in this band, even if you don\u2019t particularly enjoy the tempo or the over the top antics. There\u2019s a good reason people are talking about DragonForce. Realistically though, the world doesn\u2019t need this album. DragonForce offer nothing new here, it\u2019s just more of the same and if you didn\u2019t like it before you have literally no reason to check this album out as it\u2019s merely an extension of Inhuman Rampage<\/em>. I suppose if you already have any of DragonForce\u2019s albums you don\u2019t really need to have another. <\/p>\n

Mark Fisher<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DRAGONFORCEUltra Beatdown Roadrunner (2008)Rating: 5\/10 Known for their incredibly talented musicianship (anyone played them on Guitar Hero?) London-based DragonForce have enjoyed main stage success on both Ozzfest and 2008\u2019s Rockstar Mayhem Festival among other well-publicised tours. Ultra Beatdown is DragonForce\u2019s fourth opus and, although plenty tongue-in-cheek, with it they firmly establish themselves as one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dragonforce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7079"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12183,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7079\/revisions\/12183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}