What can one expect going into a show by British power metal heavyweights Dragonforce? This far on from the worldwide sensation of Guitar Hero, the shape of the night was anyone’s guess, but Saturday’s show both met the high expectations set by their reputation and proved them to be (at least personally) relics of a bygone era.
The crowd ran a gamut from skinny nerds drawn to the ‘Nintendo metal’ moniker the band adopts, to leather-clad old-school rockers, neon-haired women, and drunk young guys drawn to loud noises. Dragonforce t-shirts proudly extolling the merits of drinking irresponsibly were rife.
Given this rowdy state, the crowd were ready for Wollongong dungeon-crawlers LORD – a heavy metal band in the classic sense of the term. Helmed by frontman Lord Tim, the rockers took their cues from the traditions of speed metal, with Tim’s rapid-fire playing matched note for note by the skilled Mark Furtner.
Perhaps it’s indicative of this critic’s own evolving attitude, but the machismo exhibited by Lord Tim grated, as it did when the headliners took to the stage. Calling for us to cheer on Dragonforce, Lord Tim berated the crowd’s lacklustre response with, “You sound like a pack of sheilas,” and the wincing of every woman in the room was audible. Still, the fun the band were having was infectious, as bassist Andy Dowling endearingly attempted to get his bandmates moving in Status Quo-style sync.
Their virtuoso sparring, in which one soloed while the other threw ‘wanker’ gestures and aped their noodling, rendered all other guitar duels obsolete.
It’s been 7 years since singer ZP Theart departed from Dragonforce – and from the reaction of the crowd to the emergence of Marc Hudson, he’s hardly missed. Hudson need no longer plead his case as frontman – his powerful vocals saw him through.
Herman Li and Sam Totman are unparalleled in both their technical prowess and abandon when it comes to guitar. Their virtuoso sparring, in which one soloed while the other threw ‘wanker’ gestures and aped their noodling, rendered all other guitar duels obsolete. Li, especially, looked boyishly gleeful as he lifted his guitar by the whammy bar before slamming into a monstrous choral riff. Totman, preferring to sneer, playfully leaned into scumbaggery, but his two-handed tapping was as clean as it was incomprehensibly fast.
The attitude had shifted to toxic, and only continued when [Marc] Hudson dismissively referred to ‘Through The Fire And Flames’ as “the only reason you fucking came here tonight”.
The rhythm section, too, shone. With legs like tree trunks, Gee Anzalone maintained a near-constant blast beat, all with a smile on his face, and Frédéric Leclercq overcame a sizable hangover to deliver the goods. In the night’s most cheerful moment, he and Anzalone held the stage with a cover of the Super Mario Bros. 2 theme, played on an electric guitar emblazoned with Sonic The Hedgehog.
It’s exactly that nerdy aesthetic that grinds against the masculine posturing of the band. For such incredible musos, they still act a bit try-hard. One minute Li was playing a lightning guitar solo with a fidget spinner as a plectrum (yep, that happened); the next, Hudson was pulling a punter on stage to rip a shoeie, and the rockers started trawling for trim. They’d starting imitating ‘Aussie slang’ early on, and employed it here to see if a female punter was “up for a root”. When Hudson greeted us as “cunts”, the first time, we cheered along with the ruse; he later qualified that in Britain, it’s the worst thing you can call someone, before telling us we were cunts “in the British sense of the word.” The attitude had shifted to toxic, and only continued when Hudson dismissively referred to ‘Through The Fire And Flames’ as “the only reason you fucking came here tonight”.
Dragonforce remain absolutely astonishing musicians, but, as it turns out, mean drunks. Through the fire and the flames they have carried on, but they have not gone unscathed.
Dragonforce played the Manning Bar on Saturday June 24.
