British epic power metallers DRAGONFORCE are putting the finishing touches on their new album for a tentative spring release. Speaking to Alto Music at this past weekend's NAMM show in Anaheim, California, DRAGONFORCE guitarist Herman Li stated about the band's follow-up to 2014's "Maximum Overload": "Crazy enough, we've been in hiding — we didn't post anything online, on Facebook or Twitter — but we've been hiding making an album. So we're actually almost finished with another one already. People can expect it in spring this year. We're just putting the final touches to the new album now." DRAGONFORCE's forthcoming effort will mark the band's third full-length studio release with singer Marc Hudson, who joined the group in 2011 following the departure of original frontman ZP Theart (now in SKID ROW). Asked if it was difficult to find a new vocalist who could help DRAGONFORCE retain its core sound while enabling the band to move forward, Li said: "To be honest, yeah, it is really difficult to find a singer that can sing old stuff and new stuff at the same time. So it took quite a while for us to find Marc. And he had never been in a band before professionally; he was just, like, in a band of friends, like starting out. It took a while to get into the groove of the thing, but now he's completely, you know, doing it. He's really awesome now." Li also talked about DRAGONFORCE's more varied musical approach on the last couple of albums compared to the band's earlier efforts. He said: "The first few albums, they were fast all the way through, and we really kind of tried to show that, yeah, we can do really melodic, really fast high-speed songs. And now we actually branched out and added more elements. And it actually made it easier for the solo sections — to not just play over fast beats all the time. We held back for so many years — concentrated on the speed and all that — [and] now adding the other elements is actually kind of refreshing, to combine the two together." DRAGONFORCE's new album was once again recorded primarily at Fascination Street studios in Örebro, Sweden with producer Jens Bogren, who has previously worked with OPETH, THE DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT, AMON AMARTH, KATATONIA, SOILWORK and SYMPHONY X, to name a few. DRAGONFORCE released a comprehensive career-spanning "best-of", "Killer Elite - The Hits, The Highs, The Vids", last July through Spinefarm. The 22-track set contains two hours and 30 minutes of music, featuring both studio and live material, with promo clips added to the deluxe set.
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