Tuesday, September 9, 2008

DragonForce - Ultra Beatdown (2008)

Ultra Beatdown is the fourth studio album by DragonForce, released on 20 August 2008 in Japan through JVC and on 26 August 2008 worldwide through Roadrunner Records [4] and Universal Music.[5] It was the first studio album to feature Frédéric Leclercq on bass. On 4 July 2008 the first single from the album, "Heroes of Our Time", was posted on their MySpace profile.[6] On 8 July 2008, the music video for Heroes of Our Time was released onto their MySpace profile. The songs "Heartbreak Armageddon", "The Fire Still Burns" and "A Flame for Freedom" were all played on 106.1 Rock Radio during a interview with ZP Theart on 15 July 2008.[7] On 14 August 2008 Ultra Beatdown was made available for pre-order in the DragonForce official web store. On 18 August 2008 the album became available for streaming on the band's MySpace page.

Prior to the album's release, the shortest song (excluding "Invocation of Apocalyptic Evil", the 14-second intro on Valley of the Damned) was the track "Dawn Over a New World", from the second album, Sonic Firestorm. This honour now goes to the special edition track "Strike of the Ninja". This song also holds the honour of being the first and, so far, only unedited song recorded by DragonForce with a length of less than five minutes, albeit due to it being a re-recorded version of "Feel the Fire" by Sam Totman's side project Shadow Warriors.

Track listing
1. "Heroes of Our Time"
2. "The Fire Still Burns"
3. "Reasons to Live"
4. "Heartbreak Armageddon"
5. "The Last Journey Home"
6. "A Flame for Freedom"
7. "Inside the Winter Storm"
8. "The Warrior Inside"


Band members
* ZP Theart – vocals
* Herman Li – guitars, backing vocals, producing, mixing, engineering
* Sam Totman – guitars, backing vocals, producing, mixing
* Vadim Pruzhanov – keyboards, piano, theremin, kaoss pad, backing vocals
* Dave Mackintosh – drums, backing vocals
* Frédéric Leclercq – bass, backing vocals, additional guitars

Guest musicians
* Clive Nolan – backing vocals, additional keyboards

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