DragonForce
August 15, 2006
The State Theatre
Words: Tony Cheslock
Illustration: Huggsmugglers

If you ever see DragonForce channel the metal gods of Valhalla in person, please be sure to bring a flack jacket.  Their show is a continuous volley of musical artillery fire that leaves you captivated, ready to storm a coastal Scottish monastery with a horde of blood thirsty Vikings.  Or you could be left wondering why the singer was wearing leather pants in a room where the atmosphere is basically bursting into blue flame all around and the thermometer on your new Dick Tracy detective club wristwatch reads 132 degrees.  For a band that has never played a live note on this side of the bay read: this is their first major U.S. tour they managed to sell out the State Theatre on a Tuesday night. A little bird told me that in fact, they're selling out shows all over the U.S. This is a beacon to their work ethic of playing impeccably skilled and metal-as-fuck live shows that will melt the back of your eyeballs to the retinal walls.  With respect to the heat in which they rocked the crowd in St. Petersburg, you have got to marvel at how clean they run their set.  They drink lots of liquids on stage while wearing skintight jeans, leather pants, and long sleeve dress shirts, yet manage to showcase a dead-on precision in their playing style. This makes you either want to go home and feverishly attempt to get better at thrashing your old sunburst-colored Epiphone, or take that same sunburst-colored Epiphone, completely disassemble it, and eat it bit by bit in the hopes of achieving those fifteen minutes of fame Andy Warhol always squawked about.

Their show was a complete recreation, if not an experimental improvement, of the epic offerings of their recorded work.  It was also nice that they saved Through The Fire And The Flames (easily the most radio friendly selection from the new record, Inhuman Rampage) until their second encore.  (That’s right, a second encore!  Come on guys, all good bands stopped doing that like 3 years ago.)  The most amazing part of seeing DragonForce live was not the spectacle of the ax-wielding superheroes Herman Li and Sam Totman, the monstrous snarling bass riffs of Frédéric Leclercq, the war-god virtuosity of ZP Theart's chest piercing vocals, nor was it even the heard-of-elephant percussive onslaught of Dave Mackintosh's drumming style—it was the speed of which Vadium Pruzhanov plays the keytar.  There were a few times when I asked my editor, who was melting into a puddle right next to me, “was that for real?”  After seeing Pruzhanov blaze through a keyboard solo, you begin to question the laws of physics.  The whole band is so talented that it was nearly comical.  In the words of a friend after the show, "that shit was unreal… that shit wasn't even fair."