Thanks! It's cool to do an interview we don't do many, no one likes us really so far (laughs) so this is cool.

Wow. Cool. Well yea we get so far some people that hate it and some like it as well. Some people say it's too fast, but isn't a speed metal album supposed to be fast? When you're in a band you're not allowed to get brutal and say [to those people] "Shut the fuck up!" you know? As a fan you can say about metal bands "Man that band sucks" but if you're in a band and say stuff like that then people think you're an asshole straight away, it's a game I've got into now these days.

Right. Me and Sam played together in another band before which was kinda similar to Dragonforce but with "BLEAAAAAAAAA!" type of vocals. Imagine a Power Metal band with that kind of vocals, so yea that didn't really work out. We have always listened to melodic stuff like Helloween and Maiden but we never got around to doing it cos we couldn't find a singer. One day when we were rehearsing with another band we found ZP, our singer now, and he wanted to do stuff like Helloween, Dream Theater, Queensryche that kinda stuff. Now that we had a good singer we decided to really give it a shot and see what we could do. We all met in London, even though we're from a bit of everywhere I guess London's so international of a scene its not that unnormal of us to meet there. We had a couple of lineup changes from then, our drummer Didier joined after we finished our first demo and Vadim, our keyboard player joined after we toured with Stratovarius. Since then we've had the same lineup now.

We actually had some offers right when the demo came out but these days, you know you hear so much about bands complaining about lebels not doing anything so we thought instead of choosing just any label to concentrate on getting the best deal we could. Another important thing for us was we wanted to be able to tour. We didn't wnat to make an album then nine months later make another one. Playing gigs is important to us so we just lookedd for the right label, one who wanted to see how good we are live as well as writing good music so thats how Sanctuary fits in. They wanted to see us live, I mean they loved the demo but wantedd to see us live cos what if we were crap live? So we did all the support shows with Halford and Stratovarius then our own headlining shows. After that we had to record every song that was gonna be on the album as demos. All that took ages, about two years, until we finally got signed. It hadn't really taken that long,, its just these days bands just signed, boom, boom, boom, so quickly, pumping out albums constantly. Put me back in the 80's, that's pretty normal for bands taking that long a time to get signed, cos in the end its such a long term contract. For two years we talked to the guys in Sanctuary so we already had an established relationship with em and its alot easier to work with people you have known for two years.

Actually only five of the songs were released. Two of em got leaked out. (Land of Desire, which became Evening Star and Heart of a Dragon) Those two were never meant to be out but Noise Records kind of secretly put them on the website to see if people liked them or not and some of the fans who heard it knew it was Dragonforce right away and copied them and stuck em on the net, so thats how that came along. We're already working on some new songs for the next album. It's kind of a weird thing now these days, cos like I said bands now are putting out albums one after another and we don't really want to do that cos I think if a band puts out a new album every nine to twelve months they don't really get a chance to develop and I think alot of bands,one album after another sounds pretty much the same and to me I want evolution. The next album I want to be really be so much better and to kick the first ones ass! So yea, we're working on new songs but it's not gonna get recorded in like two months and release another album already. We want the next one to be really good but then again, we can't wait forever because all these bands are releasing albums all the time so a newcomer these days has three albums in two years so we're kinda stuck in the middle about what to do about that.

Well as a band when we first started that's the only way to get it out and the good thing about it is the fans decide what they like and want to hear. We had no help from any promotion company, we never had a manager or anything like that before we got signed, and well, we still dont actually but it was the best way to put the demo out. If you do a cd it's generally limiteed to your country and being in England which when we started was the Power Metal graveyard and if you'd play Power Metal everyone would laugh at you.

There is definitely a formula we stick to, catchy and fast. We personally think the faster songs of all the Power Metal bands we listen to are the coolest. We think, so why have two fast songs and the rest midtempo? Why not have all the songs fast and the whole album be good, that was our idea, the way we wanted to do it. The next album will be the same formula, fast like now. There'es kinda tow sides to this, some people say "All the songs are fast, there's no variety", but when you make too much variety people criticize you for having no personality and not having your own sound. We stick to our formula to what we think sounds good so the next album will definitely be very fast, catchy and melodic and plenty of guitar solos and things like that. Apart from a ballad there is pretty much not going to be a midtempo song.

Yea its been cool. Most reviews I read were good, there was one that said we were "wank metal" but I'll take that as a compliment actually (laughs). We can't really sit around and go "YEA! Fuck, we’re gonna be rock stars!" and shit like that, it doesn't really work that way. You always kinda need to stay on a normal level cos just because everyone says the album's good that doesn't mean it is, and sometimes albums get really bad reviews and they're actually pretty good. It's very two sided. So far we're really happy the reviews are very positive. We're trying to get a couple of shows in Europe as well, that's one of the reasons we waited a long time [to get signed] so we could play outside the UK and Noise has been really to us lately.

It's hard to say... There's so many of them and sometimes when we tell people, Yea we love Carcass and Death they say you can't hear any influences of Death. I'd say different instruments have different influences, we've got influences from Helloween, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, to Dream Theater, Symphony X then to Steve Vai, Death, Carcass, melodic death metal stuff and Bon Jovi and hard rock stuff in terms of how we play on stage. We're kind of a bit weird for a Power Metal band cos there's more partying on stage, we run around all the time and stuff. Usually Power Metal style is you know, just stand there and stare and we're a bit like Poison onstage if you can imagine that. I think for some of the guitar, its really melodic and everything, but some of the guitar is a bit like black metal with really fast picking and the drums are more death metal and vocals are a mixture of Power Metal and melodic type stuff. We try to pick all the elements of all the different styles that we listen to and put them together, the speed I guess comes from when we useed to play death metal when we were young.

It's different for everybody. Some people play for two hours a day and are really good and some need to play eighteen hours a day to get really good. I think in the end there are no rules and it depends on what works for other people, I haven't played a guitar since Tuesday and its Friday now. I think the main thing is to play when you want to do it. Play with your ear as much as you need to practice your technique and that'll come out from your ear. It's kinda weird how I sound like a guitar nerd when I talk about guitars (laughs) I don't know how that'll fit in a metal interview.

I read some stuff on our forum that some people have mentioned that I'm the first Chinese guitarist that really... well not made it anywhere, we're still a really small band but got some recognition in metal. I've read some nice things about me in the forum so that's kind of cool. Bands come and go so easy these days so it's too early to say if I inspire a young guitarist to pick it up in that part of the world, it's not really that big over there.

I like all of them on the album but my favorite, in terms of the music and how we would work out live would be Valley of the Damned. Live, it really kicks ass! It also means something to us, that song, because that's what started us off getting along from mp3 downloading. I guess I'm taking into account alot of things, not just the music, but really, everything with music is just much more than writing a song.

You know, I'd love to play with bands like Iron Maiden and all that. Well, how bout tour and have a different band each night and we're big enough to headline and have a different support band every night so I can see as many of my favorite bands and heroes but I don't think thats gonna happen. I think that'd be more interesting than seeing the same band every night.

I'd love to see the OLD Metallica and Iron Maiden, stuff like that, a variety of different acts not just the same kind of music. I can't really say, these are always the hardest questions you know what I mean? I was about to say Iron Maiden would be kinda stupid cos we're a tiny little band at the moment, it wouldn't really fit in.

Cover other people's songs? FUCK THAT!!! I'd tour and play Dragonforce songs and kick some ass. I wouldn't give a shit about going on tour with Limp Bizkit if we'd play our own songs, you gotta go out there and kick some ass and show these people this music exists, that there's something else out there! Not to sell out but to take no prisoners! That's why we do these shows in England because in England metal is pretty much dead. We've been playing these shows so people will know what in the hell we're doing and its working out now, you gotta play to people who have never heard the music. In some ways it'd be very good publicity to get out there and show this kind of music exists.

I don’t know, we're kind of like Spinal Tap now. Most gigs there's something going wrong with power cuts, hair getting stuck in guitars, things falling over and just weird things happening. I dunno, we're doomed at the moment I think. Weirder things... Getting drunk isn't really weird that's pretty normal (laughs). At the last gig the keyboards stopped working then the power cuts off on stage and we couldn't finish the last song for twenty minutes and we just tried to keep people occupied with guitar solos and things like that. I can't really think of any really weird thing we haven't done enough touring. The weirdest thing actually was when this guy from Sanctuary called us and said we had two days to prepare to play with Halford and that was like our first gig ever (laughs). Not the wildest thing to hear, maybe the next interview when we've done a rock star tour I'll have plenty of stories to tell you to laugh at about how we fucked up or something.

The coming gigs we'll be playing everything off the album plus one bonus track which is not on the album except in Japan. We plan to play some new tracks too to see how they work live so we definitely will be playing new stuff live. It'll be good because we've been bored of playing the same songs. When the demo came out we gigged for the demo and played the songs and now we play the same songs with the album out so here we go again.

No hot chick's interviewed me and asked me to go out with her (laughs).

Ah yea I don't think so either. I don't think there are many chicks out there into this music these days, were a bit doomed there.

Haha yea. I went out and got boozed last night and tried to seduce this Swedish chick there so I got home around five and went to work at nine and got back five minutes before calling you.

Yea still do, still gotta cough up money. There's so much going on with the band its really difficult to do the two but still its the first album, we gotta keep doing it so we have money to finance touring and stuff like that.

Not really... No not at all (laughs) It's more like "Holy shit you're taking another fucking two days off?!?! What's wrong with you? How many holidays are you gonna take this year to record an album and go play gigs?" That’s what we get (laughs). I haven't told him I'll need another month off at the end of the year to do the next album cos I'm taking alot of dates right now to do shows and go to Sweden. My boss will be really happy.

It's quite funny how the demo got downloaded. Almost half a million people downloaded it but are those half million going to buy the album? No idea. If the album's out in the US I bet you can't even find it in the shops. It's really hard to get stuff in the shop isn't it? Can you even get stuff like Iced Earth in easily?

Sounds promising. Was it in the bargain bin though? (laughs) I don't really know how it'll do in the US, promotion wise I don't think there's that much. It's very difficult, look at bands like Stratovarius and Helloween and how many years they've been doing music and tours in the states? Pretty much fuck off! Maybe Sanctuary will help us out and put us on an Iron Maiden tour in the states. At least we have some kind of hope so we'll keep working hard and try to score some points on getting a good tour.

It started off with Hammerfall, that pretty much started this whole thing. Now I think there's just too many bands making albums so quickly and well, I don't really like alot of them. Too many bands get signed and its really hard to decide whats good or not. With any scene with a million bands only a few will pass through and make it, like Sonata Arctica, they've done pretty well. I like some of the bands but there's alot that are too rushed and get signed without playing a gig. If it keeps happening too fast it's gonna kill the scene like black metal did, so we'll see if Dragonforce can pass through.

You can still get it off of mp3.com. That's the only place that ever sold it. If you want the back inlay you can print it off our website. We never had the money to print any cds, we used it recording the demo so we put it on mp3. Usually people record two song demos, we wanted five songs lasting thirty three minutes cos when you do two songs people don't really care about listening to just two songs of a band and when you do almost an album of music then people actually want to put the cd on. It's not like pop music where people just play one song of Britney Spears and then one of Backstreet Boys. In metal you want the whole album. It never went in print on cd just on the mp3.com website. Have you heard the demos?

You can still download it. They sound quite different actually, they're not as fast or intense because we did it when we were together only four or five months and really young. Black Winter Night has a different chorus too. I can't supply a copy cos we never printed them (laughs).

We've got a couple of festivals coming up, Swedenrock, one in Spain with Gamma Ray and Freedom Call, another in Germany. We just try to book as many shows everywhere at the moment, play some gigs before the next album, it would really suck to do an album and not get to play the songs live and do another album and if we get gigs to test out the new songs we can bring a live feel to the next album. I think this one has quite a live feel to it cos all the songs before recording it had been gigged so many times so we are gonna try and bring that over to the next album. We have to do it soon I guess cos it's taken up three years for this one almost. (laughs) The old fans who know us from June 2000 are a bit pissed off, they're still only hearing the fucking same songs and a couple of new ones. We're hurrying up on it and so far I think it will really be killer, it's fast and still has the melody and catchiness. I don't want to sound like a guy from a band going "Yea! Our next album is gonna be really good" everyone says it. It's kinda like a rule that record labels tell a band, "You gotta say the album now is really good" but this second album I think is really more improved. We've been recording demos and just laughing when we listen to it, it's really intense.

Thanks for the interview! I'm glad you liked the album. Go check out the website..... Bah! I'm like a salesman now "Go to the website, check out the website its really cool blah blah blah blah", go download some old demo videos.... Have you seen those from our website?

Ah just good for downloading pornos? (laughs) We have some cool videos, live stuff on camcorder and more shit coming out from when we were recording the album and stuff like that. For the readers who haven't heard us, check out the album. Thanks for the review and all that, I checked it out actually. Quite a long time ago it was one of the first reviews for the album too, another guy from metalreviews did it.

Hey maybe you can come catch us live sometime.

Well yea if you want some hot Swedish chicks then you can score some there at Swedenrock. There wont be any chicks at Bloodstock, trust me, I know.

No worries it was cool talking to you. Cheers! Bye!