Dragonforce

Taking their queues from our metal heroes of yesterday, London’s Dragonforce are set to drop another record of guitar wizardry on our collective arses.

Founding member and keyboard extraordinaire Vadim called up to talk about all things Dragonforce, including Ultra Beatdowns…

Interview with Vadim (Keyboards/Vocals)

of Dragonforce (UK)

By Cameron Chambers 

Vadim, how are you today? 

Hey Cameron, how’s it going? 

I’m really good man. How

are you? 

I’m great… just hanging around

and doing whatever, ha ha. 

Where are you guys at the moment? 

Literally? I’m standing out

the front of my house coz I’m doing all these renovations and there’s

people inside demolishing stuff. So I’m outside coz there’s nowhere

to hang out inside and yeah, it’s just a normal London day really,

cold and raining. But you know, I’m in a good mood coz it’s my birthday

which is quite exciting. 

Happy birthday mate, sorry

you had to spend it doing interviews. 

No, no, it’s fine, really! 

Let’s get right into Vadim.

What exactly is does “Ultra Beatdown” mean to Dragonforce? 

We basically just thought it had

a futuristic sound to it and you know, it really fit with the music

and the album cover. I don’t know if you’ve seen the cover but it’s

got all this discolouration to it and interesting colours which all

looks very cool. So we just thought Ultra Beatdown really fit well as

the music had futuristic elements to it as well. 

You guys once again used the

What is about Karl that gets the best results out of your band? 

He really knows what we want and

what we need for an album. We’ve done all of our albums with that

guy as an engineer and he helped us out in the studio so much, so you

know, he’s just a really cool guy and really easy going and really

easy to work with. He’s a great engineer and a great producer and

we just knew that he could give us exactly what we wanted. 

The press release that accompanies

or does he have some input into the writing and arrangements? 

Karl is pretty much in there as

an engineer but he always helps us out with ideas or a sound or a part

that we may be stuck with. He’s a capable guy and he can do both,

as far as production and everything goes. 

I think another reason why we

didn’t need a traditional producer was because this album was eleven

months in the making, so we’d had more than enough arguments amongst

ourselves, ha ha, so we didn’t really need another person to argue

with. But yeah, after working on something for eleven months we knew

exactly what we wanted.  

We’re definitely not out of

ideas, that’s for sure! We have too many ideas if anything. We’re

definitely a hundred percent pleased with the outcome of this record

and I think it’s really different and has the right balance in the

songs. I’m just looking forward to our fans hearing the album. 

Your last record

recording your follow up? 

I only found out it sold that

many copies recently. I was doing an interview actually and the interviewer

told me, I was like “wow”, ha ha, I didn’t know all that was happening.

It’s going really well and people are obviously liking it and our

fans are loving it, so I think the main thing was that our new songs

had to be really catchy to stand up to our previous records. 

You’ve said that you don’t

between “Ultra Beatdown” and your previous releases? 

I think there are new elements

that we haven’t tried on the previous records, as far as dynamics

go. We’ve brought some new bits into the mix, like a tango section,

which was cool, ha ha. There’s more of a push throughout the songs

now and they sound more uplifting in a way… it’s more like a punch

in the way but in a good way. Well, more like slapping a girl… ha

ha, no I’m kidding. 

I also did some scratching on

the decks on this record too, but you probably can’t hear it. 

Well now that you’ve said

that I’ll be listening for it. 

Ha ha, no, no, just enjoy the

songs! 

Well, your label sent me a

link so I’ll give it a listen when we’re done. 

Really?! Oh, it’s not mastered

yet so you won’t get the full effect, ha ha. 

It’s cool man, I’m a collector,

so I’ll make sure I buy it when it comes out. 

Don’t worry about that, I’m

sure the label will send you one, ha ha. 

Perfect! Taking into

even amid the recording process? 

That’s exactly what happens.

At the end of last summer we recorded all the songs that we’d written

while we were on the road, but since then everything has changed completely.

It’s good that we’re constantly working on songs because they constantly

sound fresh, to us and the fans. 

I think if I wasn’t in the band

then I’d probably listen to Dragonforce, ha ha. 

How does a Dragonforce song

off a vocal melody, or maybe even a keyboard part? 

A lot of wrote the majority of

songs for this album, but usually it starts with some kind of melody

line and we build everything around it and mix everything in together

and go from there. Sam and Herman pretty much do the same thing on guitar

too, they get a melody and let it grow from there. 

Whoever is writing the song will

just jam out the whole song and see how it all goes and then I’ll

add the keyboard sequences, so then we’ve got a rough sketch of the

song and we can start sending the tracks to each other and yeah, we

go from there until everyone is happy.  

The melody is definitely the driving

force behind all our songs though. 

A lot of your newer fans actually

your band? 

I don’t know, yes and no. If

people like a band then they’ll buy it hopefully. We’re not sales

people you know, we don’t want to have to sell people on our band.

If they want to hear it then we’re hoping that they’ll buy the record!

We’re really proud of this new record and we really like it so we

don’t want people who don’t love it listening to it. If someone

gives me a copy of some downloaded songs then I know that I’d go and

buy the record because I want the proper CD and the booklet, you know.  

Who wants to listen to compressed

mp3 files of a song anyway, it takes away all the power of the song,

ha ha. 

Guitar Hero really opened us up

to new fans, like people who don’t normally listen to metal had a

chance to hear us and were opened up to a new sort of music, so that’s

obviously great and yeah, things went really well for us. 

A lot of people have said that

ie: your bands who hide behind a well produced record? 

Definitely man. At the end of

the day we’re a live band, we don’t cheat or play to tracks, so

if people want to see us they’ll see us play our instruments well

and we want to give people that opportunity as much as possible. 

People are always going to try

and judge you, especially when you get bigger they think you sold out,

but it’s not true. We practice incredibly hard to do what we do so

hopefully people know that we’re the real deal. 

Trust me mate, I’ve seen

your band’s abilities. 

Thanks mate, I really appreciate

that. 

We’re going to finish up

with a few quick questions mate. 

Favourite place you’ve travelled

to with the band?  

I enjoy travelling in general

so it’s hard to choice which country I enjoy most, because I love

seeing new cultures wherever I go. People are always really nice to

us, but down in Australia the sun was always shining and people were

always nice and it was such an easygoing atmosphere, ha ha. 

But I really like it everywhere! 

Favourite album at the moment? 

Ultra Beatdown by Dragonforce!  

Seriously, like I said my house

is getting renovated so I don’t have a stereo or any of my records

around so I’ve just got our record on my computer, ha ha, and you

know what, I’m really proud of it, so why shouldn’t I listen to

it! 

It’s pretty fucking sad but

it’s the truth, ha ha. When I get bored of it I’ll send you a different

answer, ha ha. 

Most ridiculous thing you’ve

done for a dollar? 

I can’t really think of anything

other than downing a drink, but I’ll do that for free. I don’t really

do stupid things where I get paid, I just do them, ha ha. 

Best hangover remedy? 

The most cliché answer would

be drink a bit more but I won’t say that coz I know it’ll fuck you

up more. 

This will sound really fucking

weird and creepy, but you can bottles of cucumber juice that’s left

over from cucumbers. It’s really weird and my Dad showed it to me

but you drink this juice and you recover. I had a horrible hangover

once, I was puking everywhere and I drank this stuff and recovered really

quickly, ha ha. 

Great, I’ll give it a shot

this weekend. 

Ha ha, trust me man. I only just

discovered Snake Bites lately and man those things fuck you up, but

yeah, I drank this cucumber juice and felt better than I had a in weeks,

ha ha, the sun was shining and all was good! 

Finally, your most embarrassing

onstage experience? 

I wouldn’t say falling over

is embarrassing, it’s quite funny. 

I think the most embarrassing

one was a show in the US and during a song I really had to go for a

shit man, I was dying, I was hurting and completely fucked. I had to

go off the stage man! 

I went round the corner and shat

and had to do it, ha ha. I was in pain man, my whole gut was just like

“fuck”, ha ha. The band was puzzled because during the mid-section

I was supposed to be playing and they couldn’t find me and there was

me, with my trousers down at the side of the stage. 

That’s the best answer we’ve

is there anything else you’d like to add? 

I just want to thank all the fans

in Australia that have supported over the years and look out for our

new tour dates. 

Check out the new album and we

hope to see you all on tour! 

Oh, and thanks for interviewing

me man, it’s been fun. 

My pleasure mate. Take it easy. 

Dragonforce's new record "Ultra Beatdown" is out now through Roadrunner Records. For more info on the band head to their Myspace page.