 
Oh how the mighty have found themselves falling;
the once mighty power metal heroes Dragonforce
rode the Guitar Hero success, had 3 albums of
fantastic material, played some pretty huge tours
and festival slots, then they just completely
fell with the release of 4th album “Ultra
Beatdown”. The reason I think that this
time around they had no spotlight from any high
profile enterprises and their gimmick was just
running thin, naturally after an abysmally sold
tour followed where you could see lead vocalist
ZP Theart knew the band was on their way out,
the inevitable happened and he made his departure
to lead onto newer and brighter pastures. So now
they’re on hard times and now have to do
a sometimes killer move which is replacing a vocalist,
they have booked a new huge tour in much smaller
venues than the band are used to and have a full
new album with a different vocalist, can the band
survive this time?
1 thing I will say is that the route they chose
to do a global search where people without status
could audition, like a heavy metal X-factor if
you will, meant that whilst the task for the chosen
individual was daunting there would be no link
between the bands future material and a band the
singer used to be associated with. The lucky guy
was Marc Hudson and by Christ has this guy got
a set of lungs on him! YouTube video’s emerged
of the guy doing a vocal intro to the song “Holding
On” and it is extremely impressive; alongside
this his style of singing is similar but not identical
to that of Thearts, at times you can’t even
tell the difference but the kid definitely puts
his stamp on it making it an easy transition for
long standing fans.
The material itself however is hit and miss with
me; some tracks I absolutely adore like “Seasons”,
“Cry Thunder”, “Wings of Liberty”
and “Holding On” because these have
the trademark Dragonforce stamp all over them
where it counts but still show the extent of the
range they can actually go for should they chose
to hit it and progress, where as songs like “Fallen
World”, “Give Me The Night”
and “Heart of the Storm” seem to just
pass by without making a lasting impression, they
fail to get me singing along or even bopping along
because they are just too samey and done to death.
I like half the album but the other half is just
them clinging to what they had; what we need here
is more experimentation, they’ve been given
a chance now to have a rebirth with a very impressive
young vocalist and you can see here that there
are signs of forward progression that can could
be the saving graces for a band down on its luck,
they just need to man up and take the chance.
3/5
Review by James Webb
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