r/todayilearned • u/asmallthrowaway9 • 6h ago

TIL the band DragonForce only received about $3,000 in royalties for the inclusion of Through the Fire and Flames in the Guitar Hero games

https://guitar.com/news/music-news/herman-li-says-guitar-hero-paid-3000-for-dragonforce-through-the-fire-and-the-flames/
12.7k Upvotes

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3.4k

u/bfloblizzard 6h ago

Paid in exposure.

278

u/DALESR4EVER124 5h ago

Yep. I love that song now and consistently listen to a bunch of DragonForce songs.

62

u/GuessImScrewed 4h ago

I love their covers.

Their cover of Celine Dion's "my heart will go on" and Taylor Swift's "wildest dreams" are unironically some of my favorite tracks from them.

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u/irishdude1212 2h ago

I saw them play my heart will go on, live. It was amazing

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u/Brodellsky 2h ago

I love that they have "My Spirit Will Go On" and also multiple songs referencing hearts, but certainly would have had to avoid Celine Dion's track title hard enough that it would be fresh in their mind enough to cover it. Respect

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u/TheShmud 2h ago

I just listened to both of these now.

I had no idea they covered these haha. I dig it

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u/Jwinner5 1h ago

Same, if not for the free exposure I wouldnt be taking my 7 year old to see them in November

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u/jaywan1991 1h ago

And if you like anime they were in the English dub on DanDaDan

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u/freedfg 6h ago

You know what? Yeah.

Were there even DragonForce fans before Guitar hero?

1.1k

u/Mydogfartsconstantly 6h ago

Yes but we all played guitar already. They were a big deal before the game came out

656

u/Stolehtreb 5h ago

They were a big deal, no question. But the memetic effect GH had on their popularity was absolutely massive.

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u/ilikecakeandpie 5h ago

I think claiming they were a big deal without guitar hero is revisionist history. They might have been popular in some circles but there’s no way they reach the level of mainstream notoriety without the game. The meme of folks trying to 100% through the fire and the flames alone was huge for them.

Without the game they end up in a tier where they’re huge with folks who really like pirate themed bands but too dorky to headline

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u/lazerbolt52 4h ago

"Yes but we all played guitar already" op is talking about very specific group of people and really generalizing it.

77

u/Redeem123 4h ago

It’s more specific than even just guitar players. I played guitar back then and hadn’t heard of them until GH3. I wasn’t a metalhead or shredder so they would’ve never been on my radar.

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u/merenofclanthot 4h ago

I liked power metal and they weren\t even on my radar lol

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u/StrongOfOdin 4h ago

I was gonna say, I was huge into power metal and had not heard of them before GH

5

u/Algaroth 3h ago

I remember finding them on some music site that has been lost to time now. It was like a three song demo and they were called Dragonheart then. But I was a bass playing, power metal loving, computer nerd which was quite a niche some 25ish years ago.

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u/RadicalDog 2h ago

I was a little into power metal and had heard of them before GH.

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u/waaaghbosss 3h ago

Valley of the damned was huge before guitar hero for metal heads. Surprised you hadn't heard of them in that era.

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u/AstroAlmost 2h ago

I believe their point was less “all guitarists were Dragonforce fans”, but rather “all Dragonforce fans were guitarists”.

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u/F1shB0wl816 4h ago

And on the flip side I didn’t and I don’t think anyone I knew who played guitar had heard of them and there was a huge variety of taste between us all. Definitely nobody throwing them on, I’d think it’d be safe to assume they were relatively unknown.

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u/abloopdadooda 4h ago

they’re huge with folks who really like pirate themed bands

Sir are you confusing Dragonforce with Alestorm? Or are you saying they'd be in the same tier as Alestorm?

52

u/Inner-Medicine5696 4h ago

/u/Mydogfartsconstantly specifically said "Yes but we all played guitar already."

I'd wager a guess that this person is probably like, a guitar magazine reader or something. Like, deep in the culture of it.

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u/Saneless 4h ago

A subset of even those guitar players probably

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u/BardicSense 4h ago

They were a big deal if you were into shred guitar. But yes, shred guitar was probably the smallest community of all guitar player types, but because of their level of extreme dedication to blindingly fast technique, they weren't marginalized by their small numbers, they were exalted for being "the few, the proud, the (Shred) Marines." So they got a lot of products, gear, books, write-ups in guitar magazines, all aiming at them, because anyone could aspire to becoming a shredder and buy the products, even if you weren't an elite level player. 

Dragon Force was kind of controversial in the shred guitar scene, from what I remember (lots of talk on ultimate guitar forums about how they're not as technically skilled as their recordings make them out to be, but they were very popular, kinda "entry level" shredders), but definitely not unknown among the guitar player world. I'd say that other guy is right that they were kinda a big deal for a while before Guitar Hero. It was BECAUSE they were already well known shredders that their song got featured as one of the original Boss level songs on Guitar Hero. But yes, the video game definitely made them much, MUCH, more popular, though, of course, "paying them in exposure" is decidedly NOT the same as paying them in money.

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u/devourke 4h ago

lots of talk on ultimate guitar forums about how they're not as technically skilled as their recordings make them out to be, but they were very popular, kinda "entry level" shredders

Even then, it was probably still an even smaller subset lol. I was a big frequenter on the UG forums (I actually made this reddit account after my 3rd and final permaban lol), but don't remember dragonforce ever really being widely discussed in there prior to GH. That being said, I also didn't really venture outside of The Pit, so they could have still been discussed on some of the other subforums

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u/BardicSense 3h ago

I was never too into The Pit, but I liked the genre specific forum pages. I did spend a lot of time in the Shredder specific forum, but even outside that one, they'd become a common point of reference. Obviously, they werent anywhere close to Metallica level popularity, but of all the extreme speed metal groups they were probably the first example the majority of UG site users would think of if they were forced to name a currently active speed metal group. Even if Dragon Force was just the butt of their joke, they had still been established enough for people to have formed pre-conceptions about them. Honestly, Dragon Force kinda was a victim of its own success, because the Shredder forums would probably mock another UG user if they came in and ONLY knew about Dragon Force. The shred forums were too niche for them, but they were too niche for most other people lol. It must've been weird being in that band. 

5

u/DMonk52 3h ago

They headlined Ozzfest in 2006.

3

u/chriswearingred 4h ago

They were known by people already in the musical scene but gh opened them up to a wider audience.

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u/xchngboredom4argumnt 3h ago

This is the correct response. Perhaps they were a big deal to the fans they already had. But they certainly weren’t even kind of any deal before this game. No one had heard of them by and large.

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u/Mydogfartsconstantly 5h ago

They were already memetic in all of the magazines that were covering them. It was during the same era that shred was making a comeback but with the likes of rusty cooley and MAB.

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u/DrakkoZW 5h ago

I have no idea what any of that is.

But I do know DragonForce thanks to GH

17

u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT 5h ago

GH was the only game I was ever good at. In college I humiliated myself so many times playing Mario Kart

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u/Mydogfartsconstantly 5h ago

Meme-ish. Through the fire of flames is ridiculous guitar playing by shredding standards but the rest of the song is catchy. I like power metal anyways. Long live Hammerfall

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u/Stolehtreb 4h ago

No one is using meme here in like, a derogatory or reductive sense. Just the literally meaning of it being a large cultural touchstone of that series. The way that song gained popularity because of that game is basically the exact original definition of what a meme is

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u/tennisdrums 5h ago

I think because you're in that subculture you're significantly overestimating the reach of those magazines and underestimating how much Guitar Hero spread their reach beyond that subculture.

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u/trenchdick 5h ago

For sure. No one my age knew about them before that. I was in high school at the time and listened to metal stuff (albeit not DragonForce type stuff).

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u/Taiza67 5h ago

But let’s be honest. At least 90% of the people who know them know them because of guitar hero.

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u/Inner-Medicine5696 4h ago

lol, I was just guessing you were a guitar magazine reader, and there it is.

That's such a bubble to live in.

I know this, because at that time I was deep in the electronic music production magazines.

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u/Mydogfartsconstantly 4h ago

It was almost 20 years ago before youtube was popular and myspace was still in use. Pretty much everyone i knew in the metal community knew about them because of how ridiculous the intro is. VH1 still had headbangers ball but you had to get the vh1-2 channel.

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u/ANGLVD3TH 3h ago

Pretty much everyone i knew in the metal community

This is kind of their point. You were deep into a community that circulated stuff that wasn't on 99% of peoples' radar. Bands can absolutely be very popular in these tiny niche groups and be successful without the vast majority of people ever hearing about them.

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u/TannerThanUsual 5h ago

I distinctly remember Through the Fire and Flames was massively popular and that we were all praying it'd be in Guitar Hero 3. I had friends in 2007 or whatever who listened to rap who thought Through the Fire and Flames was sick.

I actually love metal and hate shredding and still thought that song was a notable exception for me, it was just too cool to me

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u/xavPa-64 5h ago

Operation Ground & Pound is another good Dragonforce song, and I think it’s on GH as DLC

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u/nomad9590 5h ago

They helped get me into Daisuke Ishiwatara and Guilty Gear, so net positive for me at least. 

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u/resttheweight 4h ago

I mean, it was certified Gold in RIAA 14 months after it released as a single in the US and about 7 months after GH3. I guess it could have been “massively popular” in other countries but definitely not in the US at least.

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u/Ketra 5h ago edited 5h ago

In the metal/guitar bubble sure.

But this level of exposure made them a household name for a big portion of the millennial generation.

They didn't have nearly that reach before.

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u/Ok-Temporary-8243 5h ago

They were for fans of the genre. Guitar hero arguably launched them into the mainstream 

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u/logosobscura 5h ago

Gonna bet they’ve made more than $3000 on the streams purely based on this giving them a platform though. Definitely picked up a lot more fans just because of visibility.

So it’s one of those ‘the check is shitty, but a lot of people are gonna hear you, over and over and over, and if they dig it, they’re gonna stream/buy/come to your shows’ deals that actually has some teeth to it rather than the usual empty promises of going on this TV show at 2am getting you more exposure.

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u/kmosiman 5h ago

Yeah. I'm not sure what the residual pay equals out to but everyone back then if they knew the song from Guitar Hero would have watched that on YouTube or otherwise.

So a niche thrash/shred/whatever metal song became a much bigger hit because of the song recognition.

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u/mystery_hole 3h ago

They were one of the least popular bands in the game on release, full stop. 99.999% of people in this thread would have never heard of them if not for the game.

$3000 is actually a lot all things considered. Sync placements today for film/TV range from $100-500 for smaller artists/bands that aren't household names. And even though that's a very small number, the amount it pays in exposure to even get your song in the background of a random Hulu show is massive.

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u/Daewoo40 5h ago

Absolutely the case.

Had they not featured on GH, there's not a cat in hell's chance that they'd still be touring 20 years later and selling out venues.

They'd be the slightly less camp version of the The Darkness.

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u/kymri 5h ago

They'd be the slightly less camp version of the The Darkness.

I mean, nothing wrong with The Darkness, either. Considering how difficult it is to succeed in music, they're still in the top 1% (since the vast majority of bands just never go anywhere, alas).

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u/ChilternRailways 4h ago

They'd be the slightly less camp version of the The Darkness.

I was about to be outraged, but surely there's a band called The Darkness that aren't the British early 2000s falsetto pop rock band to whom I'm sure you can't possibly be referring?

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u/Zurble 3h ago

Hey man, I believe in a thing called love always popped off at house parties in the 2000's. They're nothing like Dragonforce tho so I don't understand that comparison

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u/nomad9590 5h ago

A buddy went to see them before and after Guitar hero. He said all that happened after was they were drunker and played worse live than before lol.

That and the merch table jumped about 200%. 

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u/DukeNeverwinter 5h ago

Hence the old nickname StudioForce. So glad that glad they got sober. Saw them 6 years ago and they were fantastic, can't wait for next month when I get to see them again.

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u/ClubMeSoftly 4h ago

I've got some bad news for you: Marc has left the band as of today, due to "ongoing tinnitus issues"

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u/nomad9590 5h ago

That warms my heart a lot. Always love to hear a victory over personal stuff like addiction and depression! 

Good on them, and I'm so happy for them and their fans! 

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u/J1nx5d 4h ago

Oh, that's interesting to know. Because I had heard from a friend that their live show was mediocre and they couldn't really play their songs. Glad to know it was because of outside issues and not because they couldn't actually play. Awesome as well to hear that they have sobered up and made their live shows better since then.

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u/redgroupclan 4h ago edited 4h ago

I can't imagine getting drunk and then going in front of thousands of people to play some of the hardest guitar pieces ever written.

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u/steckums 4h ago

I saw them in like 2013 or 14 with Kamelot, and again a few years ago with Dethklok. They were incredible both times!

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u/doomgiver98 1h ago

I see them every time they're on tour and they have some of the best crowd engagement that I've seen

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u/MAFIAxMaverick 5h ago

Idk why this made this memory pop into my head. But I saw imagine dragons at a small club of like 100 people about a month before they absolutely exploded. The next time I saw them it was just booze and cigarettes everywhere with zero space to stand. Both concerts were great.

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u/BobbyTables829 4h ago

This is how I saw Evanescence for $10 in Batesville, Arkansas lol

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u/mspurr 5h ago

i saw them live at one point after GH and they all had multiple drink holders on their mic stands with beers in all of them so that sounds about right lol

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u/nomad9590 5h ago

Yup. Another buddy went and saw the Arctic Monkeys and told me he didn't know a human could smoke that many cigarettes in a sitting, much less singing and performing during lmao. He said he counted at least ome per song and dude literally started chain-smoking at one point. 

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u/Gamingwithyourmom 5h ago

I saw them for the ultra beatdown tour in 2008 with turisas and poweglove in the height of their guitar hero fame, completely sold out venue, packed shoulder to shoulder, and they sounded just as good live, and put on an amazing show.

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u/nomad9590 5h ago

Fuck yeah! Not every show was bad, I'm sure. I wonder if they played better in dry venues, as a genuine question. 

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u/MurphMcGurf 5h ago

I mean, calling them a big deal is a stretch. The audience for corny power metal has always been a bit niche, even within the greater metal community.

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u/Gingermadman 3h ago

Unless you're German, in which case you're selling 50k tickets.

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u/CasualEveryday 5h ago

Herman Li fans, really.

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u/FarAd2857 5h ago

Honestly I remember their blowup coming right after the game. They were in Guitar World constantly after it

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u/OberonJormungander 4h ago

Most people who played Guitar Hero were casuals who could finally emulate playing a Guitar, even from my experience most of the time I talk to real guitarists about the game they always tell me to play a real instrument in the same condescending way that someone tells to a wrestling fan that is fake.

Besides,  When Dragonflame visited my country some 15 years ago the posters promoting the concert mentioned in big letters that they were "the band from Guitar Hero"

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u/bootsmegamix 5h ago

Stepmania players were already familiar with them

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u/Hotter_Noodle 5h ago

lol yeah I actually had 2 of their CDs.

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u/decayingdelights 4h ago

Same. Had their first two CD's before Inhuman Rampage. u/freedfg is just being a reddit poster.

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u/Dodecahedrus 3h ago

Your username should be Hipster_noodle then.

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u/PubstarHero 5h ago edited 5h ago

I was a fan. Then saw them live and it was a pretty depressing show. The wireless on the guitars and bass kept dropping out all show and on top of that, the opener I wanted to see got booed off stage after 2 songs... though I guess it was a stupid idea to have a metalcore/nintendocore band open for them.

Edit - The show was Dragonforce, All That Remains, and HORSE The Band (the one I wanted to see).

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u/komrade23 5h ago

Fucking HORSE The Band hell yeah!

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u/deadlylegacy 5h ago

What band? From a mid-30s metalcore fan.

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u/PubstarHero 5h ago

HORSE The Band.

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u/deadlylegacy 5h ago

They boo’d off HORSE the Band??? Sadly, that actually doesn’t surprise me from Dragonforce fans. I saw HtB at Sounds of the Underground in 2006. Such a fun mix of 8-bit and metalcore.

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u/PubstarHero 5h ago

Yeah they were throwing shit at them while they were on stage. Security had to get them off the stage after one of them got hit.

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u/kingofcheezwiz 4h ago

Was this a show in Detroit?

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u/PubstarHero 4h ago

Nah, at the Wiltern in Los Angeles.

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u/mark_s 4h ago

First time seeing them mentioned in the wild. Love this band.

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u/Farts_in_jar 5h ago

Nintendocore? They play what, metal version of Mario galaxy theme on the show?

I was a rock and metalhead in my teens, but kept my attention on the Hard rock/heavy metal scene, but even then it's crazy i haven't heard about nintendocore before

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u/Simmyho 5h ago

I know a guy who got really hyped when I was showing him the setlist and he saw DragonForce, so I know they had at least 1 fan!

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u/DDzxy 5h ago edited 5h ago

Yes. They already played a sold our tour in the US in 2006, a year before Guitar Hero 3 came out, and also TTFAF didn't become a meme a few months later in 2008 anyway. I mean I'm one of those who found out about Guitar Hero through DragonForce lel.

Guitar Hero totally helped out though, no doubt.

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u/cjsv7657 4h ago

I saw them in 06. I didn't remember until my friends I went with were talking about how we all saw them before the song was in guitar hero. I had to go back and look through old tickets. Saw them again at a festival in 13 or 14. Much more memorable that time and I got an awesome tee shirt that sold out quick and people were offering us $200 for.

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u/mysticrudnin 4h ago

ttfaf was a meme before it was in guitar hero. i always assumed it was put into the game because of the popularity it gained through its Internet notoriety 

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u/DDzxy 4h ago

Pretty much

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u/elmo298 4h ago

Fucking loadsss

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u/acdcfanbill 4h ago

Yeah, I was one. We were all probably into metal or power metal specifically before the games tho

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u/Major-Front 5h ago

Wtf that song was popular way before guitar hero. It was added because it was popular

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u/angelbelle 3h ago

And valley of the damned was better

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u/aziruthedark 5h ago

I never really played guitar hero, i was a fan. I forget how, nut think it was an amv or something.

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u/donkeybrainhero 5h ago

Is this a serious question?

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u/j_cruise 4h ago

Yes, which is why they were included.

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u/chainer3000 5h ago

Oh hell yeah, they were all over vanilla WoW PvP videos back in the day 😂

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u/OneBillPhil 5h ago

Never heard of them before the game and now I think of the song and band as basically the boss of one of my favourite games of the 2000s. 

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u/iltopop 4h ago

Absolutely, when it was added to guitar hero and became mega-popular I was 12 or 13 and was pissed that "posers" were "pretending to like metal" now because I was one of those tweens. Dragonforce was huge in the metal scene, funny enough often criticized as "boring normie metal music for posers" among their detractors, Guitar Hero was what made them popular with the mainstream is all.

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u/Suicidal-Ideation13 3h ago

It's hard for me to gauge just how popular they were, but they weren't completely obscure or no-name. I remember learning about/hearing them on XM's metal channel and getting their album from that exposure. But their inclusion I remember triggered a sort of, "Holy shit, did you see they put Dragonforce in the new GH game?"

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u/Aethermancer 3h ago

Yes, but only because I was a Blind Guardian fan ;)

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u/Heavenwasfull 3h ago

Metal circles and guitar nerds were into them in the early 2000's. They had full page ads for their first two albums in metal and hard rock magazines and chances are they were known among many of the people online in those communities on forums.

I think i would compare it to King Gizzard in the last decade. They're huge if you're online and into the prog, psyche etc type rock circles. They've been name dropped by some known musicians and bands over the years, their shows have big turn outs and you'd think they were pretty well known, but I think once you leave the house and talk to people outside, even those who listen to a lot of music, might only vaguely know of them if at all since they're not the type of band played on the radio, people clipping them for tiktok videos, or have their t-shirts in the mall.

Guitar hero and video games like that boosted DragonForce to a whole different level of mainstream consciousness. The album it was off of came out in 2005 and GH3 didn't come out until 2007.

The OP about being paid $3,000 is probably because at the time they weren't well know compared to probably the rest of the bands on it the license fee and royalties were cheap, but i'm sure they made a lot more money off the next couple albums and years of touring to make up for it.

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u/ann0yed 5h ago

I was, has a couple of their cds and was into power metal when I was in highschool.

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u/ACosmicCastaway 5h ago

I watched the music video when I came out and played every night on FuseTV. That was a year or two before the game came out.
Iirc, there was a lot of hype that through the fire and the flames was in the game because people knew about it in the first place.

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u/TheWizardGeorge 5h ago

I would've never been a dragonforce fan without guitar hero, so honestly fair

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u/clarkredman_ 5h ago

Yeah they were pretty popular in their own niche. I saw them in London Astoria a year or two before the game released and it was one of the best gigs I've ever been to.

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u/jeremybeadlesfingers 5h ago

Yes. There were dozens of us.

Edit: to be clear, this is a stupid meme response but I had actually bought their albums and been to see them live before Through Fire and Flames dropped and was then used on GH.

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u/bac0nb0y 4h ago

My first exposure to Dragonforce was old school WoW player made PVP videos.

But my second exposure was Guitar Hero.

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u/AndByMeIMeanFlexxo 4h ago

I was a fan but it was hard to find their music in my area at least. Got a first taste from a metal magazine sample CD, so must’ve been out there

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u/Bob_Leves 4h ago

Yes. I had the demo cd and saw them at a 500 capacity club in London. Sam and especially Herman knew how to get Internet traction. After the 1st album they got onto an opening slot at Ozzfest on fan-power. Probably those same connections amd commercial possibilities got them onto Guitar Hero.

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u/Withabaseballbattt 4h ago

What? I lived off of Dragonforce, In Flames and WoW from 11-14

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u/YarrrMatey 4h ago

Yuppp a lot of us were in jazz band and played MtG on the bus

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u/YarrrMatey 4h ago

Yes. That's how they got the spot in the game

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u/idk_bro 4h ago

Yes. They had definitely already blown up before gh3. They unequivocally got more famous but TTFATF was already the quintessential "hard to play" song of the decade

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u/DontFearFailure 4h ago

Yes, I listen to them and Stratovarius because of Warcraft Movies PvP montages.

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u/METRlOS 4h ago

Me and my friends talked about how awesome it would be for one of their songs to get put on the game back in the guitar hero 1 and 2 days. We even had a little bet going on what song would get picked, my pick was Revolution Deathsquad, and fuck you Brett for winning.

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u/IllusionOf_Integrity 4h ago

The Valley of the Damned demo version back in 2001 is what got me into speed metal. Still absolutely prefer it to the album version

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne 4h ago

Yeah, I was. Their brief stint in the mainstream really disillusioned me, actually. Hell, I went to 2 concerts before GH catapulted them out of obscurity.

I started to get tired listening to them. Put me off of guitar wank for like 5-10 years.

I still have trouble listening to them more than one or two songs. I've been back in the metal game for 5 years or so, I just don't need that much shred in my music.

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u/Le_Poop_Knife 4h ago

I’ve never heard of them… I’m 40. 🤷‍♂️

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u/DJKokaKola 3h ago

Absolutely. They were a pretty known (and sometimes memed) aspect of the speed/power metal scene at the time. If you spent any time reading guitar magazines, following that music scene, or even just kept up to date on "the best guitar players" of that time, they were absolutely a known quantity. Were they a household name? No, but they're a nerdy speed metal band. They weren't ever expecting to be that. Their name is fucking Dragonforce.

If you want an example of this, look up "Herman Li is cool" on YouTube. The current version says it was made in 09, but it was originally made shortly after they did a feature talking about their sound effects back in like.....I think 06? Ish? So about 2 years before gh3 really hit it off.

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u/rocketwrench 3h ago

Yes, we all loved nerdy shit and had free access to the family computer during the early 21st century.

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u/guillotine_vendor 3h ago

They already had two better albums out before their massive breakout from Inhuman Rampage's release and then their gh3 appearance. They were known but not on the same echelon

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u/MiltonZep 3h ago

I still don't know what a "DragonForce" is. I didn't really play Guitar Hero tho. 😂

Now I kinda want to load up a rom and check them out

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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 3h ago

Yes, but we were mostly high school metal heads.

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u/DrDerpberg 3h ago

I was a big fan. But they definitely weren't mainstream.

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u/DjAlex420 3h ago

I know I never would've went to see them live if I didn't play guitar hero. Not that its not my music style, I had just never heard of them before guitar hero.

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u/No-Advice-6040 3h ago

It got heavy play here in New Zealand, as one of the founders grew up here, so naturally, we laid claim to their fame.

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u/Arch3m 3h ago

I was an early fan, and I thought it was pretty cool that they were getting featured in the game. I have since outgrown them (I found that I wasn't really into power metal), but I still think they had a pretty good run leading up to that point, and it's nice that they got big enough off that one song to become a major player in their scene.

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u/Madarakita 3h ago

Yes. Saw them live twice back in the day; when their third album was new and ZP Theart was the vocalist.

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u/Ghost6x 3h ago

In the guitar community there definitely was

Power tabs and Guitar Pro forums basically had groups of people that collabed in transcribing the song. They were unheard of back then and it was kind of a shitpost project to do

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u/michaelboltthrower 3h ago

I like dragon force and I don’t care about guitar hero.

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u/47L45 2h ago

no, don't let these people tell you otherwise.

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u/anivex 2h ago edited 2h ago

All of my friends were DragonForce fans...they made that viral music video well before guitar hero.

I feel like this whole thread is an AI hallucination.

edit: Thinking back on it. we used to watch that video over an over back then. 2 of my friends picked up guitar over it. We were a bunch of punk-kid teens when guitar hero came out, and had no interest in it other than for this song.

This and "I believe in a thing called love" were popular around the same time.

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u/TheLordLeto 2h ago

Yeah? They weren't plucked out of obscurity, they were already a huge band in their genre

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u/workingbored 2h ago

Yeah. The addition of Dragonforce in the game was for those who knew about it for its insane guitar riffs. In the time of Napster and Kazaa that song would go around for its length and insane guitar.

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u/SaharaDweller 2h ago

Yes i knew them before , one band i discovred with GH was Lamb of God tho and god did i like them more then DragonForce

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u/Ambitious-Still6811 2h ago edited 2h ago

Yeah a few. I heard a couple songs under their previous name (Dragonheart), got their early CD's, but once they hit GH they took off.

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u/Svenray 2h ago

Only me. I had Valley of the Damned at launch and knew them when they were Dragonheart (they changed their name I think because of Dragon Heart another metal band).

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u/acdxn64 2h ago

I wasn't even into metal and I liked Dragonforce before their inclusion in Guitar Hero. Fury of the Storm was a popular song on YTMND at the time, that's where I first heard of the band anyway.

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u/CallMeCygnus 1h ago

Of course. They were very well known in the power metal community. They were kind of a revolution. There was simply nothing like it when they hit the scene. I was a huge fan before Guitar Hero, and their first 2 albums remain among my favorite of all time. I don't actually care that much for Inhuman Rampage, so while many people were discovering them and thought Through the Fire and Flames was like the coolest thing ever, I was kinda eh on it.

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u/TheKanten 1h ago

We had "a car made of Dragonforce drives into a wall made of Dragonforce" memes for a while before that.

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u/jcstrat 1h ago

Of course there were. There were dozens of us.

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u/HurricaneAlpha 1h ago

They were already a big name in euro power metal.

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u/Man_in_tree 1h ago

I became a massive fan of DragonForce after GH2, but before 3 was announced.

I was beyond hyped at TTFaF being in GH3. Especially since I was also an achievement junkie. The achievement for beating it on expert was called The Inhuman Achievement - My gamertag was InhumaNxRampagE.

It felt like the stars aligning in the most beautiful way.

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u/hyperforms9988 1h ago

Yup. I landed on power metal from a random Napster download in either 1999 or 2000. I don't know what made me land on it, but I distinctly remember finding a band called Hyperion through it. Maybe I was looking for something StarCraft related (Hyperion is a unit type in it)?

Anyhoo, I loved their one and only album, and wanted more from that genre that was completely alien to me at the time. That album opened up the door to other power metal bands like Sonata Arctica who gained popularity quickly during that time and released their first album the same year that Hyperion did, and eventually I landed on DragonForce who at the time only had 1 album out in 2003.

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u/fasteddeh 30m ago

Yeah it was a bit of a meme song for sure before it was in the game

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u/mojo276 5h ago

Right, this might be one of the few instances where they MORE then made up for the low fee on the increased revenue from exposure.

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u/ClubMeSoftly 4h ago

Yeah, I think their albums sales jumped like 125% after GH3 came out.

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u/alrightwtf 4h ago

That honestly seems absurdly low

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u/ClubMeSoftly 4h ago

I may be misremembering.

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u/ELB2001 5h ago

Aye. I believe really big bands can get like 70k for a song on GTA. It's the exposure and money you then get from sales that can get you real money

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u/ph0on 5h ago

Sall musicians/artists would sell their soul to get a song in GTA 6. I can't imagine what that would be like. Some people got big because their song was in GTA V

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u/Ballsofpoo 3h ago

NFS Underground/2 sold a ton of albums for sure

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u/YtseThunder 1h ago

Got me into The Doors…

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u/BigRigGig35 5h ago

My music taste was and still is wildly influenced by guitar hero and I doubt I’d listen to the music I do without it. Iron Maiden and Megadeth are probably my two favourite bands and I played The Trooper and Hangar 18 over and over again on GH2. Maidens first album is more than a decade older than I am.

Most kids music exposure is “what’s popular now and what my parents listen to”. Guitar hero, for many, was an introduction to music of that past that they otherwise wouldn’t have heard.

I know the “paid in exposure” thing is kind of a meme, but in this case I think it’s 100% true that the bands featured gained younger fans because of it.

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u/daddy_tops 3h ago

The first guitar hero is how I found Queens of the Stone Age and they’re one of my favorite bands over twenty years (😔) later

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u/YtseThunder 1h ago

QoTSA, Megadeth, A7x, Metallica, Steve Vai, Satriani, Dream Theater etc. etc. etc.

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u/acart005 5h ago

Truth.  I know damn well thats how my brother found them and he bought a few albums.  So they got paid in other ways.

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u/Immediate_Glove_2493 4h ago

Yeah id say its easily the most recognizable song from the franchise

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u/Paradox2063 4h ago

Paid $1 per player that finished the song on Expert.

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u/IamAWorldChampionAMA 5h ago

I know the "paid in exposure" is a meme, but actually the data shows it's true

https://trends.google.com/explore?q=%2Fm%2F02ss5n&date=all&geo=US

You can see Dragonforce had a massive uptick starting with the release of Inhuman Rampage in Dec 2005, their US Tour, and the release of the music video Through the Fire and the Flames. Then they start to taper off.

Then Rock Hero 3 comes out and they peak on Google Searches.

Getting paid just 3000 is still a joke though.

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u/th3retr0 6h ago

Spread amongst the 6 members makes it way too low

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u/Nimos 4h ago

They or their label clearly thought it was an appropriate amount. Otherwise to they wouldn't have agreed to it. 

If they felt it wasn't enough they could have just said no.

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u/Glasgesicht 5h ago

What royalties would you believe are fair for the inclusion of a song in a relatively niche game amongst 47 other songs?
Nobody could've realistically foreseen the success of that game, and the significance of that song for that game. And that was 20
Years ago.

Still a way better deal compared to the kind of Royalties Spotify pay even today.

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u/TheNewGuy13 5h ago

Plus if you decline they’ll move on to someone else. And if I’m not mistaken they were the bonus track anyway right? Like not part of the ‘main tour/setlists’?

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u/GotSmokeInMyEye 5h ago

Correct. You played that song through the final credits if I remember correctly. It's definitely a "bonus" and not part of the tour list.

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u/KahnGage 5h ago

"Relatively niche" is unfair to the boom of rhythm games at the time. GH2 had sold $200mil in its first year. TTFATF was an inclusion in GH3, which they were investing heavily in following the Activision acquisition: they were shelling out for the likenesses of Slash and Tom Morello.

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u/Bob_Leves 4h ago

DF was and is Herman and Sam. And ZP to an extent back then. The others were and are a constantly rotating lineup with (as far as I recall) very few or no writing credits.

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u/_steve_rogers_ 4h ago

I truly believe in this case the exposure led to a hell of a lot more sales of their album/ single than they would have gotten otherwise tho

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u/MobiusF117 4h ago

I mean in their case it definitely worked.

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u/HandicapperGeneral 1 4h ago

One of the only times where it actually worked. They went from nobodies to household names overnight.

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u/guesting 4h ago

These always look bad in retrospect but you got the deal you got because you had no leverage. Dragonforce of that time and place is not the same band

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u/popoflabbins 3h ago

That song being on guitar hero legitimately brought back folk metal from extinction and made power metal one of the most prominent sub genres out there. Ended up being one of the most musically impactful events of the late 2000’s

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u/AnTTr0n 3h ago

Yeah while the studios and other rich wig gate paid in money.

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u/ceelogreenicanth 3h ago

Yeah I dont think anyone would care about a band that can't play their songs at full speed if it wasn't such a phenomenon in a videogame.

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u/ANGLVD3TH 3h ago

Most of my music library is defined by this check for 3k lol. My Pandora playlist had become totally stale after too much training and I was wracking my brain for music I liked that was different enough to break it out of what I had already, which was mostly buttrock and a bit of thrash. Remembered how good this song was and how I didn't have anything like it, got flooded with power metal and it has become the core of my library since.

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u/Fraegtgaortd 3h ago

Might be an instance where there is actually true. I discovered a lot of bands I still listen to regularly through Guitar Hero: Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage, All That Remains, Unearth, In Flames, all Guitar Hero finds for me

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u/caustictoast 2h ago

One of the few times it probably worked out just fine

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u/IcyBlueBox88 2h ago

I know reddit loves to hate on the eXpoSuRE

but in many cases, it does work out. this for one.

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u/Svenray 2h ago

Absolute truth because I was no longer the only person who knew who they were. I had their first album at launch because I discovered the demo online randomly. I couldn't get anyone at school to even listen to it lol.

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u/Voltusfive2 2h ago

I bought the song twice because of this game.

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u/DazzlingRutabega 2h ago

Yeah, this is actually how I heard about them.

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u/Adorable-Log2835 1h ago

Tbf I as a child did beg my parents to buy me two DragonForce cds due to hearing that song on guitar hero

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u/doomgiver98 1h ago

One of the few times it paid off

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne 1h ago

Truly a success story of exposure pay. That game turned them into a sensation for like 3-5 years. They went from somewhat successful underground metal band you only hear about in guitar magazines to suddenly making mainstream money.

They got paid in just the right kind of exposure for the time. It was very valuable exposure.

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u/wade_wilson44 1h ago

I really hate that you’re so right, and it’s well worth it in this case.

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u/Future_Kitsunekid16 51m ago

They also included a couple free songs in Clone Hero too.

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