Dragonforce are “Defenders” of Extreme Power Metal

The metal world collectively scratched its head when Metal Blade announced they’d signed Dragonforce earlier this year. Since riding a wave of success based on the “WTF did I just see???” factor in 2006 the band’s star has steadily faded — although they’ve been completely unwavering in their devotion to “extreme power metal” — so it was a bit surprising to see a label known for signing and developing bands on the way up nab one on the way down. I figure Metal Blade has some kind of patented Record Sale Calculator (aka Brian Slagel’s brain) that scientifically determined exactly how many records Dragonforce are capable of selling in 2014 and made the band an appropriate offer based on that. And they’ll probably come out on top.

Anyway, the new Dragonforce song “Defenders” sounds exactly like the previous new one “The Game” which sounds exactly like every other Dragonforce song ever (except with special guest vocals from Trivium’s Matt Heafy). If you’ve heard Dragonforce before you know exactly what to expect. Which doesn’t mean that I didn’t find “Defenders” a good bit enjoyable — I guess the gimmick still has some life left after all. Stream it below via Loudwire and pre-order Maximum Overload here before its August 19th release.