Reaching into Infinity

Reaching into Infinity is the seventh studio album by British power metal band DragonForce, released on 19 May 2017. It is the band's first studio album to feature drummer Gee Anzalone and the last to feature longtime keyboardist Vadim Pruzhanov. A music video for "Ashes of the Dawn" was released on 15 May 2017, and a music video for "Midnight Madness" was released on 20 September 2017. Pruzhanov was not featured in either of these videos, nor in any of the shows that the band performed during and after the recording of the album. In a video published on his official YouTube channel, he explained that he wanted to have more time for his daughter and that due to contractual obligations, he had to choose between performing in all or none of the shows; as a result, he was absent from the album's promotional tour, and he eventually left the band in May 2018, with no official replacement since then. Songwriting and concept The album was written largely by Sam Totman and Frédéric Leclercq, with Vadim Pruzhanov contributing to one song and Marc Hudson contributing to some of the lyrics. Leclercq stated he listens more to traditional heavy metal, thrash metal, death metal, black metal and progressive metal than he listens to power metal, which is why the album sounds different from the band's previous efforts. When asked about Leclercq's songwriting work and the possible influence of his extreme metal side project Sinsaenum, Herman Li stated, "We try to make use of everyone's skills, which is something we didn’t do much at the beginning of the band. I don't think Sinsaenum made too much of a difference, because there are still so many ideas we haven't been able to put into Dragonforce yet, and if you introduce too many new ideas you lose focus. [...]" The band at first wanted to have a guest for the harsh vocals, but they eventually had Hudson give it a try and they were happy with the result.