Sam Totman — born in 1979 — is a founding guitarist of DragonForce and the band's principal composer. If Herman Li is the visible technique, Totman is the structure. Most of the material written across nine albums is his — the harmonic progressions, the choruses and the architecture of tracks running past seven minutes while keeping a clear direction despite the speed. Writing singable music at tempos above 200 beats per minute is a problem of composition, not of execution, and it is what separates DragonForce from bands that merely play fast. His lyrics and titles are deliberately epic and frequently self-ironic — the band named a record Extreme Power Metal (2019), taking the exaggeration as a programme rather than an embarrassment. That self-awareness is part of the group's identity and sets it apart from European power metal, which treats the genre with solemn seriousness. Before DragonForce he played with Li in Demoniac, a black metal band — an origin that explains the extreme speed the two carried into a melodic format. He has crossed every line-up since 1999, including the change of singer in 2010, and is, with Li, one of the band's two permanent elements.
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