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Of Infinity - Demo CD

Of Infinity's Alessandra sent me a copy of their 3 song demo CD back in early September and asked me to give a listen.  The self proclaimed female fronted, melodic metal band does not easily fit into one of the standard musical genres, but is a true mixture of genres.  They have a very gothic look (think Evanescence), but obviously are classical trained musicians with a progressive metal edge (a la Dream Theatre and Queensryche), with some thrash/death metal thrown in (Testament comes to mind) for good measure.  All 3 songs on the demo show some very promising glimpses of what they can become, but it also shows their lack of song writing experience (which seems to be a typical problem for classical trained musicians, see Yngwie Malmsteen).  I think Of Infinity stands a very good chance of "making it" in some way or from, if they can accomplished a couple things.

  1. Find a drummer.  The computer generated drums tracks scream of just that, computer generated.  They lack any feel, and really take away from the songs.
  2. Forget all their training for a couple months and learn AC/DC's Back in Black and Bowling For Soup's Drunk Enough To Dance cds.  Then try to figure out a way to mix simple harmonies into their song writing, without losing their sound.
  3. Add some emotion to the vocals.  Alessandra has an excellent singing voice, but in the demos it comes off very sterile.  I'd like to see her listen to some Karen Lawrence (Blue By Nature), and add elements of Karen's techniques into her style.

That being said, if you are into progressive music, I'd suggest stopping by Of Infinity's site, take a listen, and maybe by a copy of the demo for yourself.  In a perfect world, I'd would have liked Of Infinity to spend a week with the NJ band Xenon.  Just a week hanging around those guys (and girl) would enhance Of Infinity's sound, and take it to the next level.

Published Sunday, October 03, 2004 7:47 AM by donxml
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Of Infinity said:

This is Alessandra from Of Infinity. Thank you for doing this review on our new CD, the band and I really appreciate you taking the time to do that.

I do want to make a small correction about the drums on the CD. The drums on this CD are real and acoustic; performed by percussionist Randy Herbert of SLC, UT. Nazareth Sando, guitarist/songwriter, writes all the drums for the band which he composes electronically, and then has them performed live in the studio when the band records. The band has recently acquired new drummer, Carlos Teller (San Antonio, TX).

Thank you again for listening, we really value your feedback and constructive criticism. Take care!

Alessandra
Of Infinity
http://www.ofinfinity.com
November 15, 2004 11:08 PM

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About donxml

I’m an independent consultant, specializing in .Net solutions architecture, based out of New Jersey who also doubles as an evangelist for XML, Domain Driven Design, enterprise architecture and .Net. I do not work for Microsoft, the W3C or any other big company that you may know of (at least not yet). I’ve been an indie for over ten years, and although I’ve been tempted a couple times to take a job with companies like Microsoft, I’ve haven’t found something better than my current situation. I work mostly with the large pharmaceuticals that are based here in New Jersey, and usually find myself on long term contracts. Definitely not the prototypical indie consultant, but it lets me dedicate time to my non-income generating activities like the developer community stuff, plus financing open source projects like XPathmania and MVP-XML. If you would like to talk to me about doing some contract work, just contact me via the contact page. My rates vary widely, depending on lots of different variables, but mostly distance from Jersey, and type of work. Plus, I’ve been known to donate some of my code for various projects.
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