You don’t go to DragonForce solely because you like metal. You go because it’s an experience.

The longtime British power metal band proved there’s a reason they can still sell out venues after all these years. Every inch of that show at the Granada on Sunday night was wild. It had everything: confetti, a crowd surfing chicken, giant arcade games, a fucking dragon. It was overstimulation at its finest.

The crowd was comprised of metal heads, video game nerds, a combination of both, and a whoooole lot of kids who got enthusiastically dragged out with their families (calm down, they loved it). The guitarists all took turns shredding our faces off, and sometimes they did it on top of giant props from great heights.

The production on this show is enormous and fit for a large stadium– but we got it in the Granada, so all that energy was compacted and exploded with force. There’s no one out there doing what DragonForce does, and it should be an experience every music lover tries, at the very least, once in their lives.

They were joined by Swedes Amaranthe (so many vocalists!), the operatic Edge of Paradise (the only American band on the bill), and the very, very, very comedic Italian silly boys in Nanowar of Steel, who started the show by talking out of their butts.

If you’ve never experienced a comedic Italian metal band (that is literally the genre the prefer to go by), this may have been your only chance. All four bands on the lineup were big on theatrics, costumes, and lasers upon lasers upon lasers. So it really wasn’t just DragonForce who were into overstimulating the crowd.

This was also a cool show if you’re into capes. So, so many capes.

Anyway, here’s a butt ton of photos.