Interview Sam Totman & Herman Li DragonForce

Lineup: ZP Theart - Vocals Herman Li - Guitar Sam Totman - Guitar Vadim Pruzhanov - Keyboards Frédéric Leclercq - Bass, Harsh Vocals Dave Mackintosh - Drums

OzzFest 2006: XI Alpine Valley (East Troy, WI) 7/22/06 Interviewer: Karma E. Omowale Additional Questions: Josh Thorne Photos: Erika Kristen Watt

"We always thought we played some cool songs and in a way, it’s a challenge to get everyone to hear it. I think people would like it, if they hear it".

As it has been said a thousand times over, people never know what they want until you give it to them, and that's exactly what England's DragonForce is doing. Judging from overwhelming audience response worldwide to the “Flame of the Young”, it looks like the momentum of that fire will rage on for quite some time, and if no one else in the metal community would agree, the band begs to differ challenging those who oppose them!! After all confidence is the name of the game; but at least they have astounding musicianship to back up their immense self-belief! At this rate, they will continue to "Storm the Burning Fields" taking America by storm being metal’s answer to the Beatles. We caught up with the bands’ two guitar virtuosos, Herman Li & Sam Totman, during this year’s OzzFest before their set. In this quick witted tag-team conversation Li and Totman discuss their third and latest album, Inhuman Rampage, their stubbornness especially surrounding the video shoot for "Through the Fire and the Flames" and more…

Karma: First off thanks for doing the interview with me.

Sam & Herman: You’re welcome.

Karma: Congrats on landing Ozzfest!! How does it feel to come from the land of heroic metal legends hail: Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Napalm Death… Must be amazing to be able to tour with Ozzy.

Sam: Oh yes, it’s really cool! I mean it all just happened really quickly. We did a tour last September I think it was…

Herman: [Shakes head turning to Sam] That was in May! It was two months ago!

Sam: [Turns to Herman] I always say September! Well anyway, we played in L.A. and one of the guys from Ozzfest checked it out. That was the first day, then on the next day they said, “You’re on the Ozzfest!” That was the first we heard of it so it was just kind of all of sudden. But yeah, it’s cool; we’re having a good time and hopefully get some new fans and stuff. It’s cool!

Karma: This is coming from one of our other writers that was not able to make the show: “You guys said recently that your sound is influenced a lot by videogames. I honestly wasn't that surprised as I've told people for years that you guys could have been the soundtrack to some old Nintendo games (in a good way, of course)! I'm curious, are there any particular games that influenced your sound?”

Herman: Well video games were only one of the influences. Most styles of music we mixed together but people just try to put that together with everything else. It’s just one of the things.

Sam: Yeah, yeah. Our influences are like from everywhere, basically. Then we’ve got from hard rock to metal, you know all the stars of metal. Everything you hear in everyday life I think if you’re writing a song or playing an instrument. I think, yeah…everything that comes down from our music is from everywhere. I think videogame is just one of the things. We used to be big fans of them especially in the old days. Some of the sounds and stuff that come out on the album sound like video games.

Karma: As far as guitar skills go, there's really not a bad in your genre aside from Nevermore that can compete with you guys. When did you realize that guitar wizardry would be one of the major elements for your sound?

Herman: Again, it’s the same thing by not limiting by only one style of music then you limit yourself and your band to what you can learn and how you can grow. By listening to so many styles of music, I listen to jazz-fusion; you know the really brutal stuff and try to make everything to you, who you are. If you’ve been listening to music for that long, we have the time to actually grow with the music scene and learn all this stuff. You know you start to listen to all this stuff that was kind of not your time but some older guy would tell you that the new stuff is also really mixed with it.

Karma: Congrats, on the release on Inhuman Rampage; it’s a great album. Did you feel you had enough time for you to be able to create the kind of album you wanted?

Sam: Well, I mean yeah…as far as making the album…

Herman: …yeah, this was the only album that we didn’t finish it last without sweat kind of still on our head, you know. We didn’t go, “Argh, we don’t finish it!” We actually kind of finished it and relaxed.

Sam: Yeah, I mean it probably took us six months to do it. We had breaks in between the recordings; we were doing festivals around Europe and stuff. There was so much time going into it, at least we’re just happy that it’s over really! [Chuckles] I’m happy people like it…

Herman: [Smiles] …we like it! So that’s probably the main thing really.

Karma: Exactly!

Herman: At least we didn’t spend time doing something that we hated!

Karma: Asides the fact when on the road, you’re the ones that have to play it every night! [Laughter ensues]

Sam: Exactly!

Karma: If you had to do Inhuman Rampage all over again, would you change a thing?

Herman: Well we wouldn’t do it again, that’s for sure! [We all laugh]

Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Herman: We hate recording parts more than once.

Sam: Some people like going into the studio and stuff but we hate it! It’s nice when you do something and it sounds good but I mean the studio, for us, is not what it’s all about. I mean the only reason we do it is because we want to go out on tour and have some fun and get out there and party and stuff.

Herman: It’s a part of life, [it’s like] you have to go to work. Doing the album is going to work for us.

Sam: Yeah. We’re pretty happy with it. It’s the album that we actually finished it and we didn’t want more time. The other two albums, we had to finish them a bit sooner than we actually wanted to; even though we were happy at the end. This was pretty nice, we are happy with it. 

Karma: Which is your favorite song off the album and why?

Sam: For me personally, I like them all. The thing is whenever we make an album we always try to make all of the song up to the same standard. I mean you’ve got a lot of albums out there where you have a couple of hits and then all of the ones that are not so good. We always try to make every song as good as each other. At the end there’s always some that are a personal favorite, and uhm… but for me, sometimes you like one where you get sick of that one. But we try to make them all good.

Herman: Yeah! But they’re all different, they’re the same style but different.

Karma: For the video of “Through The Fire and the Flames”, did you come up with the concept for it or did you leave it up to the videographer?

Herman: Well we don’t really listen to people, so they gave us some… they tell us what we think about it… We tell them “It’s rubbish!” and it’s good that we put our own input in. The guitar solo in the video with the box thing, that’s pretty much our kind of idea, and the drinking stuff…

Sam: …the solos…

Herman: …but we just did it anyway. That all actually just happened, we were just doing it.

Karma & Erika: Which turned out really cool.

Sam: ...yeah, the guy that we got came up with the idea and we just thought, “May be it would be cool if we did that”. So it was kind of fun!

Karma: There’s a lot of international unity within the band [with Dave Mackintosh and Sam being English, and Sam living most of his life in New Zealand; Herman being from Hong Kong; ZP Theart is South African; Vadim Pruzhanov’s Ukrainian; & Frédéric Leclercq’s French]. How or does that play into the creation of your music?

Sam: I don’t think it makes a big difference to be honest. We all kind of met each other in London, just like with any big city is like everyone’s from everywhere else anyway. We don’t really get any Ukrainian keyboard melodies or anything coming through. We all sort grew up with the same background; we all listened to hard rock/metal and all of that. So I don’t think it makes a difference…

Herman: …we don’t even see that we’re from anywhere really.

Sam: Yeah.

Herman: We’re just people in the world, it’s like “so what!” It’s okay from there. We don’t care about that! [We all laugh]

Karma: What has been your greatest challenge after five years/three albums in that the band has been able to overcome in order to get you where you are at this point in your career?

Sam: We can only take each day as it comes. We never really think, “Oh we want to do that”. “We have to have that”. We keep playing songs we think are good and everything sort of rolls into place…

Herman: …I guess the challenge is we try to do something and the whole world is trying to destroy it.

Sam: Yeah, that’s true!

Herman: It’s like we try to do a tour and something happens like the plane will crash… Not that! [Laughs] But it’s always an external force…but hey, that the way the world go around.

Sam: I think in a way the biggest challenge, for me, we always thought we played some cool songs and in a way, it’s a challenge to get everyone to hear it. I think people would like it, if they hear it. In a way it’s cool it’s a challenge to be able to get it out there and hopefully people like it, you know what I mean!

Karma: Definitely! During that timeframe, what have you learned about your bandmates and yourselves?

Sam: [Face deadpans] That we don’t like them; but we already knew that anyway! [Laughter erupts]

Herman: We’ve been around since ’99, ya? All of us, we’ve known each other for so long, we don’t think about it. It’s just the way it is. Some people are like that and don’t change. You have to accept people the way they are.

Sam: In a way actually, I think we get on pretty well now. In the beginning, (we didn’t grow up as friends together) we kind of all came together because we wanted to make a band. And I didn’t hang out with any of them over the weekends, I only met them at band practice. I used to always hang out with my mates and so I didn’t hang out with the band, [I used to say] “Their idiots!” But now I actually like them.

Group: Awww!! [Laughter ensues]

Herman: [Mimics Sam] “Oh, I hate them the suck!” We said the same thing!

Sam: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, “I hate them!”

Herman: “We don’t want to see him” We all saw each other just except [points to Sam] him!

Sam: [Voice deepens] Because I’m fucking cool, that’s why!

Herman: Yeah, you’re so cool!

Karma: So what's in your CD player?

Herman: None.

Sam: Nothing! Music’s banned on the bus! Actually that was the first time that’s happened.

Herman: I was dying! I’d ask ten times a day if someone could someone shut that rubbish off.

Sam: And we’re surrounded by music all day long so basically don’t listen to much at all. I just watch TV.

Herman: We’re getting old… [Laughter fills the area]

Sam: [Laughs] …yeah, we’re getting old and miserable!

Herman: [Shock fills his face] Oh you didn’t mean that!

Sam: Yeah, I meant it!

Karma: If you could commission a band to do a DragonForce cover, who would do it and which song would it be?

Sam: I think I’d like to get a band who thinks they’re really good and just to show that they’re actually not very good, ‘cause they wouldn’t be able to [mimics fingering the neck of a guitar].

Group: [Laughter] Ohhhh…

Herman: All right man! That’s the best answer you’ve done the whole tour! [We all laugh]

Sam: No, it’s to prove that they really can’t!

Herman: And get them to play it live as well to see if they can really do it! That is so cool!

Karma: Here are some role reversals: If your job were to interview bands, which one would you interview and what would be the one thing you'd want to know about them?

Sam: Anything or from a particular band?

Karma: It can be a band, whomever!

Herman: Emmm…

Sam: Hmmm… I don’t care about anything really! That’s hard!! To be honest, I really don’t know.

Herman: You have no good answers coming back from this one, yeah! [We all laugh]

Sam: I’m not interested in anything enough! All I want to do is get drunk and go… [Stops in mid-sentence] Yeah, that’s about it really! [Uproarious laughter fills the bus] I’m sorry! I suck!!

Herman: Oh… [Shrugs shoulders]

Sam: At least I admitted I couldn’t think of anything!

Herman: We don’t need to interview bands because we see them anyway, we see bands al the time. People in bands they already know what the answer gonna be. Actually, I want to ask a lot of bands…not a lot of bands my next question I bet you’re gonna answer me , “Are you gonna tell me the your new album is faster and heavier and is more melodic”!

Sam: Yeah!

Herman: And that’s never the case most of the time! That’s what’s on Blabbermouth anyway! I always see bands go [imitates a whiny voice] “We’re making our new album now, it’s faster, it’s heavier…

Sam: [Laughs] …more melodic!

Herman: …yeah, “More melodic” and it’s NEVER, it’s actually less most of the time.

Karma: What’s in your guitar case?

Sam: Uhm…pretty much my guitar. You know I never see my guitar case anymore, I walk up to the stage and our guitar tech gives us the guitar. It’s all nice and tuned up and everything! [Laughs] [Turns and looks at Herman]

Herman & Sam: Hmm….don’t know!

Sam: Maybe he’s putting some disturbing things in it!

Karma: If you could start propaganda about your band, what would it be?

Herman: We don’t want to bullshit!

Sam: You don’t want to make up something that’s not true just to sell some records, then people would think your posers and all that. We’re honest and nice guys.

Herman: We don’t need to be mysterious or pretend we’re so hard to talk to or [that] we’re so cool and you know we’re above everybody…that's boring to fans just to watch too much television.

Sam: I think if you have to start propaganda, it means you don’t have very good songs and that you need something to help you out! [Hmm’s ring out on the bus] Maybe it can help out but otherwise… Like I was watching this thing the other night and apparently this guy lied about being a gangster or something. And then his career went down hill a bit!

Karma: Well said, do you have any final words for or special messages to your fans gentlemen?

Sam: Oh yeah, thanks for liking us; [chuckles heartily] if we’ve got any! We appreciate that they like us!

Herman: And we'll be back in the US in September.

Karma: Oh rockin'; who are you coming back with?

Herman: [Smiles] We'll be headlining [All That Remains & Horse the Band]. You'll find out…

Sam: [Laughs] …just go to DragonForce.com!

Karma: Thanks so much!

Sam: You're welcome!

We'd like to thank the powers that be that made this interview a possibility, you know who you are!

o   Click here for photos/review Ozzfest 2006: XI Alpine Valley, WI

o   Here for review for the Ozzfest 2006: XI Chicago date

o   Stay tuned for photos / review of the band's US Fall: Inhuman Rampage Tour