Ad Infinitum: Into The Modern Abyss
What happens when you run out of chapters? You write an entirely new book. That’s what AD INFINITUM have done. After three chapters of albums, a year after the release of Chapter III – Downfall, the Swiss symphonic metal band released Abyss in October this year. Both a progression of their sound as well as a step back from their typical sound to explore other styles, including a lot more pop influences to mix in with their metal sound. As the band continue their tour around Europe, sharing the music from the record, vocalist Melissa Bonny spoke about the album’s creation, the progression of their sound, and what their live shows have become when performing this new record.
“The tour’s going great,” Melissa begins. “We are super happy to see how well the new album is received, especially because we just released it at the beginning of the tour. It’s crazy to see people already singing the lyrics, even of the songs that were not singles, and to see that people love it so much. We were a little bit nervous, because it’s definitely a shift for the band to do something less symphonic and more modern. We were nervous, but we’re super happy to see that people are enjoying it so much. So right now in our shows, a lot of songs from the new record, and I have to give credit to Nik [Muller, drums], who prepared an awesome light show. We have this brand new setup on stage with light production that is the biggest we’ve had and it’s a lot of jumping, dancing, singing and a lot of fun interaction with the crowd, which is great to have whilst we’re playing seven out of ten songs that are from the new record.”
Abyss, the band’s fourth studio album, was released the same day AD INFINITUM kicked off their tour in Drachten, Netherlands. On this tour, they played to many cities and experienced notable nights, as Melissa describes. “We had a fantastic surprise playing Ljubljana for the first time in Slovenia, where the crowd was probably the loudest we’ve heard in Europe. It was just insane and it was the first time we played there. Just crazy loud and the response and the participation. So that’s one of the highlights, I would say, but to be honest, all the shows so far have been great, and it’s also nice to return to places like Munich, where we were and played last year, and the show was sold out. Now we see that there’s a part of the audience that is also our audience, even though we’re not headlining this time. So far, everything is going great, but really the highlight I would say is seeing someone become a fan that night.”
For this fourth record, the band went to a songwriting camp for a few weeks to create the music and for the group to think about the direction they wanted to take the next album in. “We met one week in December,” she explains, “and one week in February or January. The big change for us was that we didn’t want to force any symphonic orchestrations where they were not needed, and we tried to really focus on what we wanted to write and not think too much about people’s expectations. When we wrote the first record, it was very symphonic, kind of also power metalish and then we kind of kept a bit of it in this new record because this is how we started and this is what we do. But this time, we really wondered and asked ourselves, ‘what do we really want to do right now? What represents us as musicians and as music lovers’.”
“We really started writing with the mindset and idea to give a spotlight to each instrument, each musician that is actually on stage. It turned out we didn’t include many symphonic elements to this record and actually it feels really good when we listen to it. It just makes so much sense, and it really represents us right now. Suppose you listen to a song like Anthem For The Broken, you hear a piano. In that case, you hear some symphonic elements here and there, but they definitely don’t take as much space as they did during the previous records. We included more modern elements, There’s definitely different dynamics, more dynamics, and maybe some more poppy elements that we all in the band all love.”
“So with Surrender, for example” she continues, “we had a demo when we started the songwriting camp. I worked on part of it, and then I worked with Nik on it, and then we brought it to the songwriting camp. Then we and Korby [Korbinian Benedict, bass] and Adrian [Theßenvitz, guitars] discovered the very early stage of this demo. We continued working on it altogether, and the idea was to have this drop, from pop to metal in a sort of a shocking way for fun. We just enjoyed having this dancey feeling in the beginning, and people wondering what’s going on here, and then the elements of metal appear. It’s kind of funny, because when we were writing it all together, all in the same room, we were having so much fun, and we were like, ‘this has to be a single’. ‘This has to be a single’. When we presented it to label management and other people, they were all like, this is the one song where they were all like, you have to release a single for this one.”
So what would be next for AD INFINITUM? Melissa hopes to take Abyss on a headline tour. “We hope to have our first headlining tour to present this album and be able to take it even further, with the full production, with a full headliner set. That’s the wish for 2025 and to return to America. We want to establish ourselves in the territories that we’ve already played at and and hopefully discover new places as well. We’d love to go to Japan, maybe also South America. We’ve been talking about taking Abyss everywhere.”
Abyss is out now via Napalm Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS115 here:
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