MUSIC REVIEW: After Infinity - “After Infinity”
Sometime in 2023, a new band started to show up in my social feeds, called After Infinity. They immediately piqued my interest, as they are a musical collaborative project from Zsolt Szilagyi, a guitarist that I’ve been seeing more and more of in the last year or less. It seems that he may have been in need of his own creative outlet, thus resulting in After Infinity, which boasts impressive guests from the Helsinki music scene! The self-titled debut album, “After Infinity,” is due for release on March 13th, 2024, via Mauste Records, which shows off Zsolt as a guitarist, synth player, and songwriter, with Roi Partanen on bass and Gideon Ricardo taking care of orchestrations.
Was your dream for 2024 to return to the roots of heavy/power metal? If so, I’m delighted to tell you that your dream may be coming true, as the immediate first impression about this music is of a love for deeper themes, wailing vocals, and impressive musicianship, without skimping on the guitar solos. Furthermore, the guests and musicians on the album add a lot of flavor—Zsolt and guest vocalist Nitte Valo are both members of Dreamtale these days, while bassist Roi Partanen can be heard in Everfrost. Mikael Salo also used to sing in Everfrost, while Stephen Baker is known from Frozen Factory, so it’s always fun to see how interconnected the scene can be—I am a fan of working together and collaborating! I also love that the naming conventions for tracks often sounds like book titles by George R.R. Martin—consider my inner geek tickled.
Now, normally I start my reviews with a paragraph stating my history with the band, but since these guys are very fresh, my history is simply that I came on board after noticing Zsolt around at other shows and made note of his dual-colored hair and sweet, sweet mustache and thought, “huh, that guy’s definitely got his own style… cool!” I then found him playing guitars with Frozen Factory, at which point he brought a smile to my face unlike any that had been seen in a long time when he was forced to improvise when his Bluetooth battery ran out. Since then, I’ve seen him multiple times with Frozen Factory, and have checked out the new Dreamtale material as well. He’s an extremely proficient guitarist, so it’s very exciting to hear whether he’s also a competent lyricist and songwriter!
The album opens with “Calm Before the Storm,” which is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a very beautiful piano-driven intro track, not too slow, yet slow enough to draw the listener in and lure them into what is to come—off to an excellent start! There’s then an upbeat, heroic, power metal turn immediately thanks to the guitar lines of “I Surrender to You.” I keep expecting this to be a cover of the old “I Surrender” track from Rainbow back in the day, but they are absolutely nothing alike, as this is a pretty quick-paced song with speedy drum beats and very traditional power metal vocals from Italian Leonard F. Guillan.
Things take a turn for the epic with “A Game of Chess,” which starts on a slower-yet-driven note, with a strong synth push before the vocals from Mikael Salo come in and the drama kicks up in the fills, with an emotional chorus and really evocative lyrics. I love the melody in the chorus, which invokes an old favorite riff from 2014, while this one also includes chants and shouts with traversing guitar lines that create a solid base of interplay for the keyboards. Next up is another track featuring Guillan on vocals. He really has such a traditional power metal voice, so it’s nice to see a more tender side of him in “Do What You’ve Got to Do.” This is a pretty heartbroken breakup ballad, so if you love a good old fashioned cheesy song about someone leaving you, this is a great track that takes on a bit of an unusual viewpoint on the subject matter, which I always appreciate. Also, the guitar work in this track is out of this world.
“Crown of Clowns” is probably my favorite of the pre-release singles, just because it has everything: a solid musical foundation—particularly in the synths and guitars—upon which there are excellent vocals (again from Mikael Salo), with insightful lyrics and a solid high-energy kick that makes this an awesome track to blast when you need to perk up a bit, complete with some djenty bass. The ferocity in the line “you reap what you sow” really works, especially when followed by a really talkative guitar solo!
If modern music these days doesn’t have enough guitar solos for you, then look no further than “Capital Punishment,” which is the guitar-solo-infused instrumental track, which works brilliantly as a palate-cleanser halfway through the album. It has a darker tone at the beginning with a lot of delightful wankery as it progresses—there’s certainly a story being told in there and this is an album highlight for me! This is followed by another slower track, “Without You,” which features Nitte Valo and really brought the classic Battle Beast sound to mind with the heavy/power metal ballad vibe (she was their original vocalist, in case you weren’t aware). The key change is cheesy as hell, in the best sort of way and this song really feels as though it was pulled straight out of the ‘80s due to the ambience and overall soundscape.
There’s a dramatic spoken-word intro, followed by a really classic, near-heroic vibe in “The Power Beyond His Fight,” which has Stephen Baker on guest vocals. I’m sure I don’t need to go on about how much I enjoy Frozen Factory, so it was great to hear Stephen guesting here as well, in the album’s longer epic no less! Even more so, he was clearly put to work, as I wouldn’t have necessarily recognized him—he’s really doing something different than you’d hear in his band, which is very cool. There’s a really grand choir to give the song a kick in the pants, where you can hear some of the other guest vocalists wailing and the overall flow of the song is pretty solid and doesn’t rely on catchy maneuvers to get attention—the pull is in its quality.
Now, ending an album on a slower song is always something that has the potential to rub me the wrong way, but the music in this ballad is actually so outright good that I can forgive a cheesy ending quite easily. I remember Juanma Draven loosely from when I first moved to Finland and a regular crowd used to meet up for metal karaoke at Heavy Corner bar (now Kraken), so it’s fun to hear—nearly 15 years later—that he’s kept his vocal work up! Of course, this one also shows a more tender side of Nitte Valo’s voice—she’s such a powerhouse, so it’s nice to see that she can be more gentle when there’s need, though that certainly doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of drama in the track, which is only emphasized by the backing orchestrations and percussion. Ultimately, a pretty solid conclusion to the album!
Overall, After Infinity’s “After Infinity” is a pretty excellent piece of musicianship and a great display of talent from the local scene! If I have one critique, it’s that some of the vocal lines feel a bit simple—don’t get me wrong, oftentimes it’s exactly what it needs to be, but on occasion it results in a bit of a sing-talking feel; since everything else is really well-emphasized and the dynamics are really good, all I would need is a wee bit more oomph in a few of the vocal lines in a couple of the songs and this album would be outright spectacular! That said, the quality of the musicianship and the songwriting is really high-level and it’s always nice to see an artist get to show off what they can do outside of their other bands. In this case, I think it’s safe to say that Zsolt Szilagyi certainly knows what he’s doing when he’s both playing and writing music. I look forward to seeing some live shows from these guys!
Tracklist
Calm Before the Storm
I Surrender to You ft. Leonard F. Guillan
A Game of Chess ft. Mikael Salo
Do What You’ve Got to Do ft. Leonard F. Guillan
Crown of Clowns ft. Mikael Salo
Capital Punishment
Without You ft. Nitte Valo
The Power Beyond His Fight ft. Stephen Baker
Two Restless Hearts ft. Nitte Valo & Juanma Draven
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