For us, it’s about improving on what we already have. We’re not the kind of band that likes to drastically throw everything out of the window when we start work on a new album. The guitars were mostly the same, although I do have a new seven-string Ibanez custom model that I used to record. “For this record, I was using the Kemper Rack which copied my sound from the previous albums – a Rocktron Prophesy pre-amp. “What we were using gear-wise is fairly similar to our set-up in the past – just with a few tweaks,” he says. Li, who has an Ibanez sponsorship and has designed several signature guitars for the company, has a very calculated and focused approach to achieving his distinctive guitar tone and sound. That sense of familiarity, interestingly enough, fits in well with the band’s approach to getting their sound right. Behind the boards was Swedish producer Jens Bogren who had previously worked on Maximum Overload with the band. Reaching Into Infinity was recorded throughout 2016 across various studios in France, Sweden, the US and their native UK. Besides, we feel like the way that he plays really complements our style. It was important to us that he had that creative input – we never just wanted it to be us saying ‘you have to play like this exactly in these parts.’ That’s not how we want this band to work. We purposefully sent him the demos for the songs on the album without any drums on them. We had all gelled really well by the time it came to make another album. “He got straight into it when he joined the band – he learned all the songs and then immediately came out on tour in support of Maximum Overdrive. With that said, however, Li has nothing but positive reinforcement when it comes to Anzalone’s place within the band. It’s a lot to live up to – especially when one considers the calibre of drumming from previous DragonForce records. The new album, however, also marks the debut recorded appearance of Gee Anzalone, who joined the band on drums following the departure of the long-serving Dave Mackintosh. Original vocalist ZP Theart exited the fold in 2010, with his replacement Marc Hudson now onto his third LP fronting the band with Reaching Into Infinity. The last few years have seen a few key personnel changes within the confines of the group. The way we see it is that we just want to make the best record that we can – so we just go in and do our very best.” There’s not even a gurantee that people who still like the band are necessarily going to like the next album – you can’t write to try and please people like that. The kind of people that would be putting pressure on us would be people who don’t like the band anymore to begin with – people who expect us to win them back or something. You can’t really let the outside world impact on your own musical direction. “There’s not really any pressure when we go in to make a new album in that respect. “Because of the way that we do things, we don’t really care what people think,” he says. At this stage, DragonForce is DragonForce – and Li is quite content with that. Thankfully, we were able to put the whole thing together by the end of the year.” Being the seventh LP in the band’s discography, it’s safe to say the band are at a stage now where there is essentially nothing to prove as far as their recorded output is concerned – there’s no clambering to gain new fans or to advance their careers. “It took awhile, because we were also doing the festival circuit in Europe while trying to find the time to get recording. “We started working on the album early last year, and we were ready to record around May,” explains Herman Li – one of the band’s two guitarists and founding members alongside fellow axeman Sam Totman.