🎶After Infinity
🌎Finland
📀Beyond Eternity
® Rockshots Records
📅 23/10/2026
Just four years after their formation by guitarist and songwriter Zsolt Szilagyi, Finnish band AFTER INFINITY are preparing to release the second full-length album of their career, entitled “Beyond Eternity”. The new album retains the core characteristics of the band’s melodic power/heavy metal sound, while this time incorporating considerably stronger progressive influences.
One of the elements that makes “Beyond Eternity” stand out is the participation of six different vocalists, who take turns behind the microphone while consistently serving the vision of the main songwriter. It is clear that Szilagyi wanted to experiment and present an album that explores several different musical directions without straying too far from the core identity of AFTER INFINITY.
Thus, the album features some classic power/heavy metal tracks, such as the playful “Crooked Carnival”, which relies heavily on the theatricality of Aitor Arrastia’s (Meta de Facto) performance, as well as “King With No Crown”, featuring Paolo Ribaldini (Delain, Leverage, Seraphiel) on vocals. The latter follows similar patterns, but at slightly faster tempos, enhanced by epic female choir vocals.
With “Infinite Feeling”, AFTER INFINITY shift into a retro mood, with the song’s almost disco-metal character being ideally served by Nitte Valo (Dreamtale, ex-Battle Beast) and Leonard F. Guillan (ex-King Company).
The album gives the listener a chance to breathe with its two ballads. “Maybe She’s Crying”, featuring Paolo Ribaldini, moves along more emotional paths, while the atmospheric “Whisper in the Air” stands out even further, with Mika Tauriainen (Entwine, ShamRain) on vocals and the piano and violin taking center stage, creating a particularly beautiful atmosphere.
Of course, the album also features more aggressive, faster and groove-oriented moments, most notably “Eternal Resentment”, where Nitte Valo delivers a powerful performance. In the middle of the album, there is also a two-minute, essentially instrumental interlude entitled “Mortal Vessel”, featuring a few spoken-word passages. The album then closes with its most progressive moment, the twelve-minute “Hands of Time”, featuring Aitor Arrastia on vocals and bringing together, to a great extent, all the different tendencies that dominate the album.
I have deliberately left the album’s standout track, “Everlasting Mark”, for last. Sara Strommer’s (Shereign, ex-Fear of Dominion) excellent performance moves effortlessly from clean and melodic lines to the song’s more aggressive passages. It is one of the heaviest tracks on the album and also features one of its finest guitar solos.
Overall, “Beyond Eternity” is a diverse and multifaceted album that attempts to showcase the different creative sides of AFTER INFINITY. The participation of six different vocalists works particularly well in this direction, giving the record an additional sense of variety and originality.
The only thing I would personally change is the length of some of the songs, as in certain cases the musical ideas could have been presented in a shorter and more concise form without losing any of their impact. Nevertheless, this is a particularly worthwhile effort that demonstrates a band willing to experiment and has the potential to introduce AFTER INFINITY to an even wider audience.
★ 8/10
✍🏻 Kostas Boudoukos
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