Power metal as a sub genre of metal often evokes images of sword waving ‘dungeons & dragons’ era coupled with falsetto warblers in ill fitting spandex romanticising a long gone scene. Existing surviving purveyors have evolved and honed their craft to avoid the ‘clapped out’ circuit. So, the massive international success of the new guard of power metal that is Dragonforce is both entertaining and mesmerising. Despite the novelty element, this band demonstrates a level of musicianship and even showmanship that has floored numerous long established acts. How many bands have managed two consecutive sold out tours to the Antipodeans on the same album? Guitarists Sam Totman and Herman Li represent the band’s core songwriting and technical support crew respectively. It was time for Australian Guitar’s Paul Southwell to chat to the entertaining live act’s winning partnership that produces solid choruses spiced up with over the top guitar virtuosity on their second tour down under.
AG: So how’d you crack the U.S.?
ST: We just went there. Ha ha. If you’ve got a good band then people are going to hear about it sooner or later.
HL: Well actually we didn’t do anything ‘cos we had a sold out tour before we released an album. Basically if you get on the biggest label in the world and if you’re crap no one will want to listen to it anyway. Word of mouth doesn’t take much time now. In my case I had friends who happened to like it as well and that started things.
AG: The style of shredding in your playing might have been started with Vai and that sort of scene and then since went underground with European metal festivals. But as for radio releases, if it cracks the mainstream, the solos get edited.
ST: We always made a point that if we ever had to edit our songs then we would keep at least the main four solos in the middle of the song. We know they’ll need to cut something out but it’s like…
HL: We’ll just go and kill the song ourselves so at least we know what we are getting. If the record label edits it, the way around it is to have six more solos left instead of twelve If they want a single and we’ll say, ’well, we won’t do the video then’ (laughs).
AG: Is playing the Ozzfest okay for a power metal band?
HL: It was actually all right. People complained about it and this and that. I guess if you played the second stage then that would be pretty horrible experience as you’ve got to get up at five in the morning and load in at seven. But you know, we played the main stage.
ST: We were playing at five in the afternoon every day which is not that bad. The first band starts at nine in the morning and there is no one there at all at that time sometimes. We had the whole day off really as we were finished by six and we could get wasted with so many people on the tour. You just find the people that are cool and stuff.
AG: You’re not using Laney amps anymore?
HL: No, we always use the Rocktron Prophecy II as a pre-amp but I’ve actually gone back to what I had before. So before I was using a Mesa Boogie fifty power-amp but now I’ve gone back to using the Mesa Boogie 52-55. They are digital pre amps so there is no need to crank the pre-amps. The power amp only needs to be nice and clean. It has to be smooth and the pre-amp has enough distortion. It’s not like the old days where you have to crank it in the head and get the tubes going.
ST: I know f**k all about equipment, Herman sorts mine all out for me anyway.
I don’t even know how to turn my amp on. I’ve never actually even done it (laughs).
AG: Is your live rig the same in the studio?
HL: Pretty much the same. The gear changes every year so what we are using now is not what we were using on the album. Last year it was a JMP-1 pre-amp and the Marshall cabinets. Now we are using different cabinets, we are trying all sorts of different ones.
The Rocktron is better than the JMP-1 because it has a nose gate fitted which you can set to multiple levels depending on the patch. So, on the rhythm programme you want the noise gate to be much stronger than say on the lead channel. Otherwise you lose all of the sustain, feedback and sensitivity. The JMP-1 you need about four or five different pedals for the noise gate if you want to do something like that ‘cos you can’t programme per patch – it is separate.
AG: Why not get the front of house [sound mixing in venue p.a.] to do that and just focus on the sheer grunt? Why compress the signal so much?
HL: They have to do their job and make their own rig sound good. We don’t want to give them that much control over it and by how much your guitar cuts off. It is pretty much set by ourselves. I want to hear say the delay on my tone out of the amplifier. I don’t want to not hear it when I’m playing as it sounds better for your own ear and you can relate better to your own lead tone then. The lead sounds are programmed so everything changes at my amplifier. Cabinet wise, at the moment, we’re not using the ones we like in Australia since we can’t bring them over. But Sam is using the Peavey Triple X and I’m using the Peavey Satriani cabinet [J-SX] at the moment to try. We’re just trying different cabs so that we can know what is good so we’re going through them. I never liked the Marshall heads in my life. I do like the JMP-1 rack pre-amps but I never liked the heads.
[see sidebar for an exploration of this statement]
AG: Your technique is fairly clean in terms of alternate picking. Sweep picking with a bad tone just sounds like mud. So, how to get clarity?
HL: Right, that’s why we use the Prophecy II [pre-amp]. That is the best one that I have come across for everything with fast playing. You can take the rack with everything in it on tour so we just take those two Prophecy pre-amps and we’ve got our sound. All the programmes are on it and you don’t have to screw around with buttons or anything. I’ve got the midi stuff racked in and the wireless is so much easier. You can tweak it a little bit anyway and just store it. The next day you can just change the presence a little bit or whatever.
AG: Are your guitars still Ibanez and shred era Ibanez guitars?
HL: I use the S series Ibanez guitars. It is thin, it’s light, it sounds good and it is easier to play. Sam’s Ibanez V has the same neck as my S series guitar. We based that V on the neck of my S series guitar because that is the one that we used to record things. We used my guitar to record and you know, it’s a Wizard neck and I think that is what Ibanez got famous for in the beginning. That’s why the guitars are so good. Even our guitars are changing anyway, you always try to improve. The Icemans have changed and we’ve got different versions with another custom one coming out.
AG: All maple and rosewood too. With the neck, how much of your fast playing technique relies on it being a very low action on a really good neck
ST: Definitely a lot. Half the stuff I play would just sound sh*t if I tried to play it on something else. Sometimes I’ll pick up a Les Paul and end up sounding like having half the ability that I have. It just sounds crap.
HL: I can’t go onstage without an Ibanez guitar. Its okay when you are sitting down but when you are playing onstage that’s where you are moving and it makes all the difference when you’ve got a good guitar. Sitting down, you know, I can play a Fender or whatever; it doesn’t make that much difference. But the angle and stuff when standing up is different. The players that have defined and refined the instrument, you know, have given feedback to the companies. Back then you had Satriani and Vai and they still do get asked. But they even ask me for feedback and I’ve told Ibanez that the Wizard neck is still the best neck. The other necks I don’t like. Of course guitar builders don’t generally go on tour around the world and see which neck is bending and failing. So, it’s the same thing and it is so much easier on the Wizard necks.
AG: What sort of pickups do you favour? EMGS?
HL: No, I hate EMGs (laughs). They sound the same on every guitar so I use DiMarzio Evolution pickups.
AG: What got you into the speed playing initially? Any players that led you into it?
HL: The drummer playing fast (laughs). It sounded cool really after listening to say Dream Theater [hums speed runs] with John Petrucci on say ‘Pull Me Under’.
ST: Most rock bands are usually pretty fast anyway. I mean, the first thing that I really got into was Iron Maiden. They are not Steve Vai fast but they still are pretty fast players.
HL: There isn’t one thing; it’s a collective of things through time that makes you play a certain way. I don’t believe in saying that one person changed my life as it’s not really that. If that one person made one album that’s great but you’d probably not care. If it’s a couple with a collective of all different players then it makes you play in a certain way.
AG: How do you keep in time? Do you listen to the snare or say the other guitar?
ST: I listen to the snare and that’s what we tend to argue about on stage. I’m always like, ‘I just want to hear snare, nothing else’, cos to me that is the thing that gives [our music] the catchiness. That’s why I’m always going up to the sound guy and saying, ‘make sure you can the snare up front and not the bass drum’.
HL: For me it’s the whole band as if I just concentrate on the snare sounding catchy I don’t hear any other instrument. For Sam, when he’s playing it doesn’t matter if there is someone standing next to him or not, he’s closed to everything else. Sometimes I’ll listen to the singer or the keyboard. You can’t feel generally everything happening together.
AG: I guess it becomes a sub conscious thing?
HL: We can get pissed off if the snare goes a bit off because you’re trying to catch up with ZP [Theart – singer]. So if you can hear the singer then you’ll be able to go, ‘oh, all right, that’s why the drummer is f**king up’.
ST: Yeah sometimes the singer gets a bit behind or too fast and it’s usually the drummer ‘cos the singer doesn’t notice. The drummer has to change his pace and you can hear him stopping and starting (laughs).
AG: When you’ve got two guitars playing the rhythm at the same time how do you get the syncopated stuff to not sound weak? Building up the bass end of the rhythm?
HL: You mean not play lead and just play rhythm? Nah, that would be boring.
ST: There’s not that many places where there is only rhythm guitar. Usually on a verse I’ll do the rhythm track and then we’ll start adding to it with usually say some kind of muted thing on one string at the same speed. You can probably only just hear it as it’s quite low down in the mix but there’s not actually that often ever just rhythm guitar.
HL: You want to have more stuff and melody on top. Just chords are boring.
ST: With the rhythm, if there is nothing else on top of the guitars it is usually because there is a keyboard thing doing some sort of melody.
HL: I learned the other day that ‘much more’ is more because sometimes just more is not more enough, you need to be ‘much more’. It is boring to be normal. Every producer is trying to tell us what you don’t need. But even on the choruses there are double lead guitars happening. You can’t really hear it but it is there. The vocal melody is played on the guitar but harmonized under it while he sings.
ST: That’s just to make it a more uplifting chorus. If you remove it the chorus won’t be quite as big.
AG: With production, you’ve said you have creative control.
ST: A producer has never really said something where we’ve said, ‘yeah, that is great!’, you know what I mean? He never needs to say you should add something because we’re always trying to do that anyway. He’s always trying to say, ‘right, take something away’.
The stuff with every vocal is pretty much harmonised apart from on verses but even then it is being filled in a bit here and there. They are always saying we don’t need to harmonise vocals. But for our chorus it’ll be double tracked octave harmony and other three or four part harmonies as well. We just think that as much as possible is better.
HL: We’ll just say we’ll put another choir in there as well then.
ST: Same thing with guitars. There are lots of places where it might only sound like it is one lead but there is actually four. I’ve played say one lead and then doubled it up doing it an octave higher, then an octave lower and then two other harmonies on top of that.
HL: You play the exact same lead again and double it left and right just like a rhythm guitar but it sounds cooler than just one single solo one. Then you harmonise say left twice and then play it twice. So to have left and right is better than just one in the middle.
AG: You’d have to be exact to fill the sonic spectrum like that.
HL: Yeah, it is a bit miserable I have to say. To sit there with your fingers’ f**king skin coming off and to do your solos and then change guitar strings.
ST: Yeah, you‘ll sit there for like a day to do thirty seconds of music sometimes. Then you get Green Day selling a million albums just from doing chords and you’ll think, ‘f**king hell, was it really worth it?’ (laughs)
HL: Or you’ll decide that it wasn’t that catchy so you use a different line.