Often regarded as one of the fastest bands in the world, DragonForce has shredded for the past 20-plus years. And judging by its new world tour, this British extreme power metal band shows little signs of slowing down. “The tour got even bigger than what the original plan was,” says Herman Li, one of the guitarists responsible for DragonForce’s wicked riffs and tireless solos.

Before the band could fully tour its eighth album (the very appropriately titled Extreme Power Metal), the pandemic moored all plans. But Li, who founded DragonForce with fellow guitarist Sam Totman, kept the buzz and love for the band alive with fans on Twitch. “It’s been two years since we've played live,” he says, “so we're super excited to be going out on tour again and doing what we love.”

The Weekly caught up with Li in advance of the the band’s April 20 show at House of Blues, to discuss metal spectacle, the extreme power of video games and … Celine Dion?

Extreme Power Metal is so dynamic in sound. How do you intend on bringing this lively album to life on stage?

When you hear a DragonForce song, things are super intense. You've got the fun element and you've got the intensity. When you go and see the show, you're definitely going to see the same thing on stage. I mean, we're talking about special effects, all kinds of cool stuff. I don't want to give it all away, but you're not going to just see a few guys jamming out and having a drum kit around, it's a full-on show with lots of things happening. You won't be disappointed. You can't even blink because there's so many things happening on our stage. We're going full production. It's actually been pretty stressful for me because it was like, wow, I haven't done this for a while. I forgot how much stuff there is for the show.

A lot of your music is incredibly fast. When you’re creating these songs, do you take into account how you’ll maintain the endurance to play through so many back-to-back live?

The endurance thing, it's not really a problem at all. Our early albums, every single song was fast. These days, we've got much more variety of material after making so many albums. It's actually easier now than it used to be, when everything was always fast. Now we've got a good mix of tempo, and it makes it more fun as well, how you can have different lights, different lasers. I can tell you there will be a dragon and all kinds of things happening on the stage. You can add more to it than just playing fast.

I don't think I've ever heard anybody say they’ll have a dragon at their show.

I'll tell you something funny. My friend Zoltan Bathory from Five Finger Death Punch, who is from Vegas, actually called me a couple months ago and said Herman, I want some dragons built, I want some dragons in my house. Where do you get yours? Advice on how to get a dragon into the house? It's so crazy.

It’s like you’re a professional dragon tamer.

I've got two. Which size are you looking for? None of those fit inside my house. I hope you have a high ceiling (laughs)!

DragonForce’s music is so fantasy-based and adventurous. It all feels like a quest. How do you get into the mindset to create something like that? Do you have any source material you draw from?

We are big gamers. We've been playing games since the beginning of the old arcade machines and all the way to the new stuff. When we started the band, we always were inspired by video game music and the whole aesthetic of it. That's why at the show, we try to make it fun. It's almost like you're in some kind of fantasy game. Even on this tour, we bring some special guests onto the stage. We bring friends to play with us from bands or they are big YouTubers. There's no limit. We try to expand the show, so they're different every single [time]. We even have a triple guitar … for certain shows.

What kind of games were a big part of your youth?

I was really into the late ’80s consoles, like the Genesis, the Nintendo stuff, the Turbografx 16, old games. Pretty much everything from shoot em ups to first person, Final Fantasy, all kinds of games, Metal Gear Solid, yeah.

Do you have any video game soundtracks you particularly love?

Street Fighter II, that's a really good one, kind of old school. Another one I really like is an old car game from the ’80s called OutRun, where you drive a Ferrari around, and it's got really cool ’80s synthwave vibe music. I like that kind of synthwave music. Anything that was bombastic and melodic I liked in gaming. That's kind of like when you hear DragonForce. You go, wait a minute, these guys must be into this kind of thing. It's like, yeah, we put that in on purpose. That's why there's the famous Pac Man sound made on guitars. Everyone remembered that.

Herman, you’re an incredibly talented guitarist and very innovative in how you experiment with your equipment to make cooler sounds. Talk a little about your process.

Well, funny enough, a lot of the things I've done can be created with a guitar and an amp without any effect added to it. It's all in the fingers. But I have so much technology and new devices. I add some additional kind of flavor individually into each sound. And I'm always looking to make a better guitar. I have like 200 and something guitars, so I'm always learning about it like a racecar. You’ve got to take it on the road, play it and improve it like a race car. How am I gonna make this better?

One of the coolest and fastest songs you’ve ever done was “Through the Fire and the Flames,” which appeared at the end of Guitar Hero III. It’s one of the hardest songs in the game, and people still remember it. Did you ever anticipate that song becoming immortalized in video game culture?

We had no idea and we have no expectation in everything we do. We just try to do our best. We think every time we make an album, this could be our last album. Maybe no one will want to listen to it anymore. Maybe this is it. We didn't think anything special about that song, that was a typical DragonForce song that we wrote. So if you like that song, you go listen to DragonForce, and you will be happy with pretty much 99% of the material.

Extreme Power Metal is a slower album compared to your others. Why did you focus less on speed and more on melody?

We have proven ourselves and created our style, and the first four albums are so intense. And we thought, let's explore and see what else we can do. So we started doing some mid-tempo songs. We had, like, an 11-minute epic on the last album, not this one, but the one before so we changed it around a little bit. ... I'm still learning as a musician and still improving. A lot of people are surprised when they see my live stream on Twitch, because when I play guitar on Twitch, I play DragonForce songs, but I also even improvise to smooth jazz, different kinds of music. People never see me play this way. It's like, well, you can't just play the same thing all the time.

That seems to be one of the great benefits of Twitch for a lot of musicians. It allows you to stay connected with fans and keep the entertainment going.

Yeah, so I'm a Twitch partner. They've been really cool helping me with understanding how the whole live streaming works. We will be streaming a lot of the shows on my Twitch channel. It won't be just one camera, it will be multiple cameras, and the view will be different. It'll be more like a view from the stage. I have cameras mounted to my guitar, mounted to the drum kit, mounted to my shoulder. So fans can see a different view of the show in the backstage area, too. Fans will like it if they haven't seen that before.

In terms of the live show, do you plan on reprising your ’80s glam rock persona roles that the band assumed in your “Strangers” music video?

There is a possibility those super rock stars might turn up at some shows in those outfits. I can't tell you when but that possibility is there. We want to make the show fun.

Are there advantages to taking yourself less seriously even though you’re supposed to be an extreme power metal band?

We're just trying to be ourselves. A lot of musicians, they want to do music because they want to do what they want to do, and not have to be serious all the time going to a job. So we just be ourselves, and by not being too serious, we can be more creative. But we're very serious about our playing of course, and making sure the show goes well and people love it. But by having that relaxed element and being like, Hey, we're gonna do this for some fun, it lets our creative process expand much further. We've got both sides of who we are. When you come to a DragonForce show it's like you're hanging out with us at a bar or in a video game. We're just going to be cool and relax.

On the topic of creativity, I loved the metal cover of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” at the end of Extreme Power Metal. Are you big fans?

I think Celine Dion's awesome. I don't know why people wouldn't like her, I mean the singing is incredible. I listen to all kinds of music, and when it comes to DragonForce, we have melodic vocals. The best style of music for these kinds of melodic vocals is usually in the pop area. And that inspires us too, in terms of songwriting, to make the biggest, most epic choruses. We thought it'd be fun to turn that into an Extreme Power Metal song in our way. When we do cover songs, it's always kind of a mess. It doesn't sound like the original that much anymore. We try to inject as much DragonForce elements into it. It's actually a hit. People love it. I never thought I would see people doing circle pits to a Celine Dion song, but now we have created that. It happened.

It’s too bad you weren’t around when she did her Las Vegas residency. She could’ve hopped on for a metal duet.

I think we need to get her to come and sing it in Canada.

Do you travel to Vegas often? Have any fond memories or favorite places you remember?

I have friends in Vegas, so we'll spend time going to places, not just on the Strip. I have a great time [in Vegas]. One of the favorite things that Sam, our other guitar player, loves in Vegas is the pinball place. That pinball museum. He goes there every time. He's obsessed with that place. The first thing he's going to do is get off the tour bus and go there.

What do you hope your fans take away from your House of Blues show?

Our show is very uplifting. They can forget about their troubles, have a great time, enjoy life and want to live life after having a great time. The positivity is what we bring to the show. So hopefully, they get out of the show and go, I want to do it again. Especially in these kinds of days right now. We want them to leave with positivity they can look forward to in life.

Maybe it'll inspire one of them to get a dragon, too.

You need a real big house for that, but why not? You can put it in your front yard.

DragonForce w/ Firewind, Vision of Atlantis, Seven Spires April 20, $27, 7:30 p.m., House of Blues, houseofblues.com