Is Through the Fire and Flames hard on real guitar?

“Another interesting thing is that a guitar string broke during the recording of the song and that stayed on the album. The last ‘WEE-OWW’, like a whammy bar pull, the string actually broke on there. The string broke because at that time we still had to pay for our own guitar strings so we’d avoid changing them! The ones for the solos we’d change, but the guitar we made the noises on, we didn’t bother changing the strings. I think we didn’t change them even after recording for six months.

“It took six months to record the album and we pieced the songs together, so Through The Fire And Flames came together over that whole period. It takes a long time to make those solos and the harmonies. Just on the beginning intro itself we had three lead guitars, two rhythm guitars and the acoustic before the singing even starts.

“It ended up on the Guitar Hero game but by that time we’d done three headlining tours in the U.S., as well as the main stage at Ozzfest. I think we were on the verge of something, but it did add an extra boost of course, and it made us kinda mainstream. We did the Ellen DeGeneres TV show, we have a Platinum record for Through The Fire And Flames in America. We still always get asked to play it on Guitar Hero when someone’s setting an interview up. They try to force us because they think it’s funny to see us fail.

“Through The Fire And Flames was also the first music video we ever made. The budget was low, I think it was about €5,000 and the drinking on there is real. We filmed until about midnight, and by 10pm Sam [Trotman, guitar] was so bored he started drinking. We were doing the guitar solos last as a separate scene and the director was going, ‘Yeah, keep drinking, just do your thing.’ So drinking and shredding has become another DragonForce thing. It was cut down to five minutes but the funny thing is we actually played the edited version on Ozzfest. We got maybe 25 minutes and that’s three songs for us, so we played the edited version.

“There was a point where I got bored of playing it but I’m back into the song now. You know what, it’s better to have a massive hit song that people want to hear than to never have one at all.”

"Through the Fire and Flames", often abbreviated as TTFAF, is a song by English power metal band DragonForce. The song is acclaimed as the most successful song by the band. The song was the lead single and opening track from DragonForce's third album, Inhuman Rampage. It is known primarily for its rapid twin guitar solos by Herman Li and Sam Totman.

The song peaked at #86 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #61 on the Canadian Hot 100 in 2008, making it the band's only single to reach either chart.[1] It also enjoyed briefly renewed popularity in March 2015 when a cover version (Tina S.) uploaded to YouTube became popular, sending the song to number 13 on the Rock Songs chart. It has sold 1.1 million copies in the United States alone and has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.[2][3]

While the song had appeared as a background track in several video games, the inclusion of a playable version of "Through the Fire and Flames" in the rhythm game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock as one of the most difficult songs in the game helped to raise the popularity of the song, and it has appeared in numerous rhythm games since.

Composing and recording[edit]

This song is written in the key of C minor (but in standard E tuning), and like most other DragonForce songs it is written in a fast tempo of 200 beats per minute with a common time signature (170bpm in the first half of the guitar solo). Near the end of the recording, guitarist Herman Li broke one of his guitar strings.[4] Despite this, the band decided to keep this recording and left it on the final album version.[4]

Music video[edit]

The track was used in the first music video by DragonForce. For the video, a shortened version of the song was used, lasting only five minutes.

The simple video primarily shows the band performing the song in a dark room illuminated by amber lights. After the rapid intro riff, guitarist Herman Li holds onto his Ibanez S series guitar with just the whammy bar. During the guitar solos, the camera focuses on Li and Sam Totman alone, with an inset shot of the current player's fretboard. During Li's solos, Totman stands to Li's left drinking. At the start of the solo, a Pac-Man sound is played by Li, after which he throws the whammy bar he used to make this sound into the air.

The music video circulated through YouTube and various music video channels, including MTV2, and was shown on the monitor screens during the band's performances at Ozzfest 2006.

Personnel[edit]

Compilation appearances[edit]

The song appears on two compilation albums: The short version of the song, misnamed as "Through the Fire and the Flames", appears on MTV2 Headbanger's Ball: The Revenge, released on 11 April 2006.[12] The full version of the song appears on Salvation, Vol. 1, released on 23 October 2007.[13]

Use in video games[edit]

Through the Fire and Flames has also appeared in several video games, first appearing in ATV Offroad Fury Pro around the time of the song's release. In the Guitar Hero rhythm game series, the song first featured in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock as an unlockable bonus song, and later appeared in Guitar Hero Smash Hits and Guitar Hero Live. In a 2022 interview, Li stated that the band only saw about $3,000 from royalties for the inclusion in Guitar Hero, despite the series having revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars.[14] The song also featured in Rocksmith 2014.[15] It is a playable song in Konami's band session arcade games GuitarFreaks and DrumMania V6, and part of the soundtrack for Brütal Legend. It is also one of the most popular songs used by Audiosurf players.[16] The song was also made available for download for Rock Band 3 on 29 March 2011 for both Basic rhythm, and PRO mode which can utilize real musical instruments.

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