BEST GUITAR HERO BAND

DragonForce

With more than seven minutes of insanely fast guitar shredding, DragonForce's 2006 song "Through the Fire and Flames" is hardly hit-single material — but it has nevertheless been on iTunes music store's Top 100 for the last twenty-three weeks. Credit Guitar Hero III, which uses the epic track as the game's ultimate challenge. "There's just so many notes," says GH III lead designer Alan Flores, adding that it took three times longer than usual to program the song into the game. "It's brutal." YouTube is overflowing with clips of kids banging away on their plastic guitar controllers at carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing speed — and even the guy who really played all those notes is impressed. "I'm definitely worse on the game than the real guitar," says the British band's guitarist, Herman Li, who got into music when he became sick of video games. "When I see those YouTube clips, I think, 'I wish I could do that.'"


Click here, hereand herefor clips of Guitar Hero III players mastering "Through the Fire and Flames."
Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

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