DRAGONFORCE
- interview (July 4, 2002) with Guitar player Herman Li

Made by: Henri Halminem

* How are you guys?

Hey Henkka, we are cool down. Good to hear from you. Raining dogs and cats in London again
as usual!

* Sorry my delay doing this interview, I know you're in the studio session now.

Yeah, kinda in and out back home in rainy London now instead of warm sunny Denmark.

Right, time has gone by... but I knew that it always raining in England! ;)

* So how is going, is it one month done (or how much anyway) in different studios?

We spend 1 week in Denmark recording the drums at JailHouse Studios with Tommy Hansen. Drums are finished now and I am recording some lead guitars with Sam at the moment in my studio. Next week we go into Thin Ice studios in Surrey (England) with producer Karl Groom (Threshold guitarist) and the serious shit begins. Non stop recording until the album is complete. We are recording at least 11 tracks but not all of them will be on the album. I am not sure how much longer we need but we finish when we are done bascially. We made the mistake with our demo, releasing things half complete with too little time spent. Although the demo got us the fans and the deal, if we could have spend more time on it, it could have been much better. A lot of people critisied it without taking into account the money we had to make it and it was a self released demo not an album or EP. Now, with the support from Noise Records we will make sure this album gonna be amazing.

* And just read and heard you have changed the studio. You're not anylonger in Denmark. What was reason to return England, and Tommy Hansen is not producing anylonger?

Well, the original plan was to record and mix everything in Denmark with Tommy Hansen EXCEPT for the guitars, bass, backing vocals and possibly a lot of keyboards were gonna be done in England, so I don't know which part is actually everything hehe. Anyway, we wanted to self produce it, since the pre-production was completed back in May 2001, long before we signed, we just wanted an engineer to help us record the album. We knew what we wanted with the songs, production and everything else long before we went into the studio doing the album. The way we want it to sound and the way Tommy Hansen hears it didn't really go along together, he is a really great guy don't get me wrong, just musicially we didn't click together. Now we are doing it with Karl Groom (Threshold) at Thin Ice studios where we orignally done our demos. Karl helped us with most of the pre-production before and he knows all the songs so he is the perfect man for the job right now.

Thanks for clearing up things, I can understand your points.

* You signed with Sanctuary Records, for me it seemed it took ages.
I was just waiting to hear you music earlier, I have waited so long time!

Yeah it did took ages didn't it? About 2 years! hehe We had the chance to sign with other
labels earlier but we think Sanctuary/Noise will work out the best for us. They also helped
us out the most long before we signed with anyone. Trust me, it was worth the wait. Also the
lawyer and all that always take some time to sort out. We are very happy with the choice we
made.

* You reached quite big success at MP3.COM site with your demo.
Was that surprise and how do you describe? It changed your lives? :)

Definitely a surprise, even more surprising we are still number 1 on the MP3.COM power metal chart over 2 years now with just 5 demo songs. That's really unbelievable. Though, we still got fuck all money haha!

* Also you've done gigs with Rob Halford and Stratovarius to just name those.
Those are such big names and are they your fave, or something you have dreamt about?

We really enjoyed the couple shows we did with Halford. They treated us really well, the
band and crew. The show in London with Rob, Bruce Dickinson and Geoff Tate was one of our best moment together. It was quite unbelievable to be touring with Halford on our 3rd gig back then!

* How about your future to come album, when and where it should be released?
How many songs, any bonus songs in some countries, digipacks, single/video etc promotion?

It should come out in September this year, I had to say this year cos we been waiting for so
long hehe. I am not sure how many tracks and what songs will go on it, we will decide once
they are all recorded, the same goes for the bonus stuff. I have already planned for the
video a few months back, it happends or not I am not too sure about that. It all comes down
to money unfortunately.

* And name of your band, was before DragonHeart, why did you change it? :)

There were 3 bands call DragonHeart, 2 movies, a record label. It was time to make a change.

Yeah, I bet... there are still many bands with 'Dragon' word.

* How do you feel PowerQuest, new band of your former keyboard player?

It's good for the UK scene to have more bands at the end of the day. Sam, who has a lot more experience helped them out a lot with their drums programming, arrangements, and doing some guitars. Sam's main focus is on DragonForce of course. Good luck to them.

* And your hair is truly, very long! How many years growing?
How much I should pay you if you could cut it short, hahah? ;)

Hahahah! Not telling, you have to guess! Don't even think about it, I am not cutting it
short! The long hair gives me the extra power to play guitar. :) (heheh)

* Oh yeah, you don't have a bass player right now. How you manage to record bass tracks? Or do you accept me if I join your band. I am very good air-bass player you know!

Diccon, our previous bassist will play on the album. He is an amazing player but he'll be
moving to Ireland soon so he won't be able to commit to the band. We need to practice our
mimming technics before we can take an air bass player! Sorry we need to catch up with you first. :) (mimming means pretending to be playing with a backing tape. Like most pop music do on TV!)

Fine yeah, make sure you come to Finland, then you will meet me! :)

* And after your album released, plans to make a tour? Is it booked yet?

Nothing booked yet but we are planning for a tour of course. We don't see a point of making albums after albums if you can't take the music on the road. Touring is the main thing when playing in a metal band, I don't know why some bands bitch about playing live and not wanna go on tour. Don't worry I got Finland written down here. :)

* Want to say final words for this interview?

Thanks for the interview dude and thanks to your readers for reading it till here! I guess
it's time for the obvious plugging to go on... I hate to sound like a salesman but I have to
do this. Check out www.dragonforce.com and our new album 'Valley of the Damned' out in
September on Noise Records. For now, take it easy.

Interview by Henri Halminem