In a recent interview with Chile’s Power Of Metal, guitarist Herman Li spoke about DRAGONFORCE‘s latest addition, bassist/vocalist Alicia Vigil (VIGIL OF WAR). Alicia joined DRAGONFORCE in early 2020 as the replacement for longtime bassist Frédéric Leclercq, who left the band in August 2019.

“Every time there’s a change of formation, it had to be done, for the band,” Herman explained. “Our old bass player, Fred — we love Fred, but he wanted to join one of his favorite bands, KREATOR, which is totally cool with us.

“Alicia‘s been the band for more than four years now, funny enough, so she’s well established in the band now,” Herman continued. “And we jell really well, we play really well together… But yeah, it’s been great so far. I think this is the happiest the band has ever been, actually, together since I remember.

“I would say the happiest time I can remember a band is when they first start early in their career, when they still have that beginning, that dream that is coming alive in them. And right now we’re just having a great time,” Li added. “I have no complaints. I’m in the happiest time I’ve ever been.”

In an interview with Brocarde last year, DRAGONFORCE guitarist Herman Li spoke about how he deals with the occasional negative feedback that he and his bandmates get from fans on social media. He said: “I think we got much more negative comments when we first started to get known, as a new band that came in. When we had our big break, a lot of people confused the music, they couldn’t accept it. But these days it’s been really, really positive generally. I mean, I really don’t get that many nasty messages… For the nasty people that wanna send them, I’m not trying to say, ‘Wake up and do it again.’ But we’ve had a long career now and a lot of those people moved on in their life.

He continued: “Unfortunately, for a lot of artists, it seems like a lot of the fans (don’t) look at them as like normal humans. They wouldn’t say these things in your face, because that would just be crazy, it would be like a crazy thing. And most of these people cannot understand that we’re just normal people and things do affect the artist’s life, what they write on the Internet. Luckily, I was told I’ve got some kind of superpower that I can suppress these things when I read them; it doesn’t bother me.

“I think to be an artist, you’ve gotta block out what’s out there, the noises, and just concentrate on what you do and express because there’s always been an opinion about artists since the beginning of time, and you’ve gotta do your thing to satisfy yourself, be who you are,” Li added.

“Too bad there’s not like a rock and roll rock star education course where they teach you about stuff like accounting, legal stuff, all the way to mental health, how you can keep that going when you become famous. The last thing you wanna be is to be famous first and then poor. Then you don’t even have a way to protect yourself against that.

“Luckily, I think for artists now, in a certain way — I mean, it’s a double-edged sword, because now people can listen to the music out there by pressing a button,” Herman concluded. “The reviews become kind of irrelevant. I mean, are young gonna listen to a reviewer or are you just gonna go press the button and listen to it yourself?”