Melissa Bonny of Ad Infinitum Talks About the Journey to Their New Album ‘Abyss’

Written for New Noise Magazine: October 2024

It’s All About Timing

When the debut single, ‘I Am the Storm,’ dropped in November, 2018, Bonny was alone in the band. There, she decided to do some crowdfunding to finance the first record, “Chapter I – Monarchy,” while the rest of the group, Adrian Thessenvitz (guitars), Korbinian Benedict (bass) and Niklas Müller (drums) joined in 2019 when that record was being recorded for release in 2020. Sadly, while planning on releasing the first album and a tour to go along with it, the COVID-19 pandemic stopped everything in its tracks, but somehow, that didn’t slow anything down, not for a second.

“During the pandemic, when we were releasing music, suddenly we had songs hitting a million views on YouTube and we’re like, ‘what happened?’ We’re just brand new, but we’re lucky enough that people were hungry for entertainment because they were stuck at home.”

The band, officially based in Cologne, Germany sees its members split between Germany itself and Switzerland, where Bonny is from, although she is currently living in Denmark. Bonny asserts, however, that the band is not fully German but Cologne is a compromise. 

“We started out as a symphonic, melodic, power metal band, but we’ve evolved,” explains Bonny. “We’ve started to influence more modern elements into our music and for this fourth record, we let go of the symphonic elements so we could go more towards a modern direction and let the other elements of our music breathe.”

Much like Underoath and Bring Me the Horizon, Ad Infinitum’s sound has evolved, but the band didn’t need to evolve; there was no strategy involved. Bonny says it feels true because it represents them and their tastes and influences now.

“We’re excited. We’re a little bit scared, especially because of this turn that we took because of the sound that we used to have and the sound that we have now. There are some risks we took with this record, but we are mostly very excited. You have to ask yourself the question at some point, do you want to keep writing music that people expect from you, or do you want to write music that you love to perform on stage? We answered by making something that feels true to ourselves today.”

That’s the Plan, at Least on Paper

“Abyss,” the newest album, is set to drop October 11, via Napalm Records. Bonny expresses that they want to open a new trilogy being more personal, especially with her lyrics; she wanted the possibility to let some stuff out and use it as a diary.

“That is something people can relate to,” explains Bonny. “It’s more personal and less about storytelling about other people’s lives like we did for the first three records. We decided, with that in mind, that this trilogy would be based on a lot of human emotions and personal evolution and that we would sort these emotions into three records. “Abyss” is the one that is the darkest, the one that talks about all the different fears and demons and second guessing; then there’s going to be an evolution that represents a personal evolution with the next one and the next one.”

To put into context how epic the scale is for this new trilogy, not only did they need to plan it musically, but also visually. Not only is it the members of Ad Infinitum but also management, the booking agency, the label itself and the teams putting together the videos and the artwork. Communication of the big picture is catamount and the end result, on paper, is something dreams are definitely made of.

“For example, if you’re looking at the videos one after another, you will see elements connecting each video to the next and that’s something that we want to do. So people, at the end of those three records, when released, they can watch things back to back and see it unfold or also for people who picked up already on the connections look forward to the next video and try and guess what’s going to happen.”

It’s a massive project to undertake, putting so much effort into it from all angles involving so many teams and creatives; it’s truly breathtaking to see how much devotion can be put into something one loves. 

““The goal was to have one character and see an evolution between the first album where this character, you can see fear. You can see discomfort in the artwork; you can see the character but it’s not completely clear. The big difference between now and when we wrote the first three records, which was kind of close to each other, was the pandemic and we could not play that many shows, whereas, now we’re on tour, we’re in the studio, we have festivals. There’s not many months of nothing, so we’re just giving ourselves the time to do it in a way that feels satisfying enough.”

This Isn’t My First Rodeo

Bonny had already had a taste of the states while working with Kamelot as a guest singer, but this tour hit her harder although she felt weird because in her mind, this is still a new band and it’s still growing, but they are enjoying the ride. Now, with a full US tour under their belt supporting Kamelot and Hammerfall and a couple European tours lined up with Kamelot and Eluveitie, it’s all been an absolute whirlwind.

“It was incredible to bring Ad Infinitum to the states,” boasts Bonny. “That’s a milestone for us being a new European band. It’s not something that you can just do whenever because it’s different markets and different numbers like the amount of people you can draw to a show in Europe is completely different because we play there all the time. You have to find a band that trust’s your band enough to bring you on tour for support and be given the opportunity and this was a really big milestone for us. On top of this, the experience was beautiful because doing a North American tour, you go through so many different landscapes and cultures. Cultures within cultures and it was amazing and we had some time to visit some beautiful things like the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.”

While Vegas and the Grand Canyon are as majestic as you can get in America, Bonny does hold a special place in her heart for a surprising and unexpected city: Fort Worth, Texas. She recalls it like stepping into a time portal; they saw the Walk of the Longhorns and wooden panel street writing. A close second was Orlando, Florida, because the venue, Hard Rock Live, was the most memorable show on the tour, while guest singing for Kamelot. Now, looking back on it, it was the best experience she could’ve ever had.

“I learned how to trust myself better,” admits Bonny. “I used to try and accommodate and to what people wanted me to do and what people told me to do and very often, I realized my gut feelings told me the truth from the start. In business, there’s a lot of opinions. So now, I feel like I’ve stepped out of the box that I thought I had to be in and I’m doing more of my own thing and it turns out to be more fun.

Photo Credit: Stefan Heilemann