Ultra Beatdown

With “Ultra Beatdown”, DragonForce doesn’t slow down, they dial everything up until the console starts smoking. This album is the band’s glossy, high-octane evolution: faster, brighter, and even more ludicrously epic than before.

Front and center is the explosive opener “Heroes of Our Time,” the song that earned DragonForce a Grammy nomination and proved their hyperspeed power metal had officially broken into the mainstream. It’s a perfect mission statement, soaring melodies, laser-guided guitar insanity, and that signature “we’re racing a comet” energy that only DragonForce can pull off.

Across the record, Herman Li and Sam Totman unleash acrobatic guitar wizardry that feels like a fireworks show set to maximum FPS, while ZP Theart delivers some of his most triumphant and melodic vocals to date. The production is cleaner, the hooks sharper, and the chaos more meticulously controlled, if barely.

“Ultra Beatdown” is DragonForce leveling up once again: euphoric, bombastic, and relentlessly turbocharged. It’s the sound of a band shooting for the stratosphere, and actually punching through it.