Toledo (US) band, The Infinity Process, have just released their latest single, Dystopia, and we’ve been taking a few listens here at the Send Me Your Ears studio today.
Dystopia is a heavy rock track that focuses on escaping the chaos of real life. It comes straight in with heavy guitars and there’s something about it that immediately feels dystopian. The instrumental section builds and creates excitement before the vocals come in.
There’s something truly unique about the vocals. Firstly, of course, its rare to hear female vocals in a track this heavy, but more than that, the vocals aren’t heavy or rocky. They sound, perhaps, classically trained, or the voice of someone who grew up singing folk songs. There’s a fragility and gentleness to the voice which makes for an interesting genre cross over – in the same way that the likes of early Nightwish (Tarja Turunen) are able to create this type of crossover.
The guitar is heavy and crunchy. We particularly liked the Megadeth style riff that accompanies the hi-hat in the section before the change in vocal effects.
There’s a brief section where the vocal effects change and feel more distant, perhaps filtered, before returning to the more gentle reverbed voice to the end.
The drumming in this track is superb. Some truly unique and characterful playing, especially in the fills, this is extremely precision playing. The Infinity Process are a band that we have absolutely no doubt are quite astounding in a live setting. Speaking of which, they are headlining a show at Prime Nightlife in Toledo, Ohio on November 11th. If you’re in the area, we would urge you to check them out.
The stinger ending is a nice touch. This is a well used aspect of melodic rock and a good choice for this track.
From a production perspective, there is a very cool synth-sounding bass dive near the start which goes right down in to the sub bass area. Frequencies this low cannot be reproduced by most speaker systems so a hi-pass filter around 35Hz would reduce all the unnecessary rumble. There are some dominating tones in the drum track, particularly when the toms are being played. These tones are around 190Hz and again around 220Hz so some careful EQing in the drum track could really help. During the rest of the track, this frequency band sounds a little underrepresented so a boost in either the guitars or bass in this area could really add some warmth and punch to the track as a whole. A wide boost across the high-mids and highs would add some extra brightness and clarity but be careful as the ride cymbal is peaking a little around 9kHz. Another surgical EQ cut here on the drum track would help to avoid boosting that particular frequency too much. There is a slight peak in the sibilant area of the vocal track around 11kHz as well so be careful not to boost that area too much.
Dystopia is an exciting and explosive melodic metal track from a band who are clearly no strangers to aggressive rock. A well crafted track.