Ad Infinitum is a modern symphonic metal band from Switzerland formed in 2018 by vocalist Melissa Bonny, drummer Niklas Muller, guitarist Adrian Thessenvitz, and bass player Korbinian Benedict, The band have released three albums to date – ‘Chapter I – Monarchy’ (2020), ‘Chapter II – Legacy’ (2021), and ‘Chapter III – Downfall’.
Emerging in 2023, ‘Chapter III’ features the band’s incredible mix of heavy riffs, epic and enchanting orchestrations, haunting vocal melodies and demonic growls. The new album is a mammoth fourteen songs long, played out over an elegant and grandiose fifty-five minutes, all coming to life with the hard-hitting ‘Eternal Rains’, keeping pace with the classic gallop of traditional heavy metal, yet twisting and turning with influences ranging from European power metal to symphonic and energy driven pop metal! Such an eclectic mix, but Ad Infinitum don’t like to be pigeonholed into just the one genre of metal, much preferring to deliver a wide array of styles. And with an immense burst of energy, ‘Upside Down’ is a red hot roar, emanating the power-driven style of bands such as Battle Beast, Beast In Black, and Metalite – yet where Ad Infinitum differ, is the immense vocal range of lead singer Bonny, effortlessly moving from traditional clean to soaring symphonic to the howls and growls of death metal! Simply incredible!
As is ‘Seth’, a hard-hitting industrial-tinged metaller, evolving into a roaring rampage of elegant symphonic power metal – the band roaming around metal genres like shoppers at a car boot sale! The band truly are an enigma, keeping listeners hooked with the quandary of “where’s the band going next” – and I for one am just as baffled as you are! But when the music is this fucking good, as long as the band remain under the banner of metal, I’m happy!
‘From The Ashes’ is the most majestic song heard so far, Ad Infinitum raising the bar to new heights – and beyond! The band have built a reputation for pushing boundaries and horizons, with ‘Chapter III’ no exception to chapters ‘I’ and ‘II’ – ‘From The Ashes’, living proof! As if you really needed proof! Moving in an even more elegant direction, ‘Somewhere Better’ is a soaring symphonic metaller with just a light dusting of the hymn-like style of anthemic metal. And I feel this won’t be the last time I use the words elegant and majestic to describe the band’s music!
And with an immediate and explosive burst of energy, ‘The Underworld’ takes off at an incredible speed, Ad Infinitum galloping like a racehorse going for glory in the final furlong of the Grand National – the Grand National, a prominent annual horse race meeting in the UK. But back to ‘The Underworld’ and its amazing power-driven and energetic stance – the band maintains the intense momentum the album began with. Ad Infinitum and ‘Chapter III’ are simply unstoppable! Incredible heaviness abounds in the graceful shape of ‘Ravenous’, a majestic slow wander of stylish symphonic metal. The hardest hitting of any song heard so far, ‘Ravenous’ pounds the ground with more force than a jackhammer – and with Bonny blending growls with clean vocals, there is an element of menace, too! Quite the opposite to ‘Under The Burning Skies’. Entering the realm of balladry, the band create a mellow and serene atmosphere, complemented by soulful, soaring vocals that even angles would be amazed by!
An aura of the cinematic lights up the album – the first twelve seconds of ‘Architect Of Paradise’ conjuring an image of the opening credits to a Hollywood blockbuster movie! And when ‘Architect Of Paradise’ fully comes to life, wow! There’s blistering pace, symphonic vocals, a Gothic metal backdrop, an industrial metal passage, menacing growls and howls – is there nothing beyond this band’s abilities? Apparently not! Ad Infinitum still refusing to be placed into any one genre of metal – ‘The Serpent’s Downfall’ even bringing a touch of the Southern rock swagger to the fore. Not to mention the blues and old music hall majesty.
Oh, and heavy metal thunder, too – the band is reinforcing their reputation for producing genre-hopping, boundary-breaking, horizon-expanding music! And in keeping with that reputation, ‘New Dawn’ re-enters balladry, albeit for short bursts! For ‘New Dawn’ features some very hard-hitting moments, an element of pop, a little hymn-like majesty, and a feeling associated with the big number in an opera! You know the one! It’s the one where the entire cast returns to the stage for the final hurrah!
A tension-loaded spoken word passage leads us into ‘Legends’, an energy laden power driven metaller similar in style to those that graced ‘Chapter III’ earlier. However, unlike earlier, ‘Legends’ has a menacingly heavy mid-song breakdown! It reappears with added menace as the song ends! Unexpected but definitely worth waiting for! The final two songs are instrumental versions of ‘Upside Down’ and ‘Somewhere Better’ – retaining just as much oomph and oof as the vocal accompanied ones.
Overall, it is an elegant hour of infectious symphonic power metal blended with a myriad of many other styles.
TRACKLIST
Eternal Rains
Upside Down
Seth
From The Ashes
Somewhere Better
The Underworld
Ravenous
Under The Burning Skies
Architect Of Paradise
The Serpent’s Downfall
New Dawn
Legends
Upside Down (instrumental)
Somewhere Better (instrumental)
Ad Infinitum: Facebook
Release Year: 2023
Label: Napalm Records
Category: Album
Country: Switzerland
Reviewed by Iron Mathew for Frenzy Fire and Metal-Roos.
