First of all, you are new – because you have been playing for two or three years in the band now – but ‘Warp Speed Warriors’ is the first album you have made with the band. So can you introduce yourself and tell us what did you do before joining DragonForce?
Yes, okay. My name is Alicia Vigil and I play bass for DragonForce now, but I have been in the music business and industry for quite a while now. I have my own band which is still going. It is called Vigil Of War which I sing and play bass in. We are a rock band based in Los Angeles. I have been in and out different punk, rock and metal bands throughout the years and it has been an honour to play in DragonForce for the last four years now.

Ah four years already…
Yes time flies.

How did you get in contact with DragonForce?
As I mentioned I do have my own band Vigil Of War here in Los Angeles and we play around the area quite a bit and there is a guy named David who comes to all of our shows and he happens to be friends with Herman Li of DragonForce. When Herman was asking around if anyone knows any bass players, my name was mentioned. He wrote me on Instagram and said: ‘hey, would you like to audition’ and then this whole process began. It was wild. My whole life just changed overnight.

Yes, I can imagine, because DragonForce has a very tight schedule and they are rather strict I think. How do you look back on the making of this new album, because with this band it was the first time you entered the studio?
Yes it was an honour. It was an interesting experience, because I am very used to go into studio recordings with the band that I am playing with, but now, because we are all living in different parts of the world it was different. We are based in Italy, we are based in the UK and here in Los Angeles, so we all went separately and I was lucky that our producer Damien Rainaud is now based in Los Angeles, so I had to go and record in person with him. It has been great. I am happy to finally be a part of their legacy and the recording aspect and I want to play these new songs. I can’t wait to be out in the world with the rest of the band.

In some of the songs you had more than average input. Can you give some examples of those songs, which ones are they and what is your special input?
Overall Sam, our guitar player, is the main song-writer in DragonForce at this moment. So he pretty much wrote this album, but we do go with our own instruments and get to put our own feel on everything. For example ‘Doomsday Party’. I remember the demo version that he sent to everybody. The bass line was just very much straight forward and there was not a lot going on, but when I went into the studio we decided to make it a funky bass line. That changed the feel of the song That was pretty cool and fun to do. Now it sounds more like the theme of the song, it is more disco metal, not just a power metal song. Something different for DragonForce I think. It is going to be one of my favourites to play live I think. There is a lot happening for me and my instrument and it is fun.

Does it mean that you could give up a normal job, now that you are in DragonForce?
Yes I am very grateful that my main source of income and priority now is that we will be touring. It has been an honour to be able to do that and it is tough to even find a job that allows you to just leave for months. At the end of the day I love what I am doing for a living and I love to do that.

In the near future there are a lot of things planned. Can you go through the plans for the near future?
Yes, just in a little, over a week, we are about to leave on our European co-headlining tour with Amaranthe. We have special guests with Infected Rain and we are going pretty much all around Europe and a few cities in the UK as well which I am very exited about. Then right after we get back, we fly to the United States and tour the country with Dethklok and Nekrogoblikon. So it is going to be great and then in Summer, we are going to hit the festival grounds and do a lot of festivals. I am really hoping, now that we are starting this album cycle, that we will be able to go to other places that I have never been. Japan, Australia and South America. I am crossing my fingers, but we are definitely heavy touring already for this year. So it is exiting.