Ad Infinitum

I was really interesting in listening to Astrofaes' demo, Ad Infinitum when I saw it is the name of a track from their The Attraction: Heavens and Earth demo (which I really liked) and had one track from it. After managing to get a copy for cheap, I eagerly opened the case only to see a gothic-like picture in it featuring the two members faces with corpse-paint. I was also wondering why they would actually put an instrumental version of one of their track and a rehearsal track recorded later. So the length of the demo drops from 27 to 17 minutes.

My surprise wasn't over when I put my tape in the radio, some odd gothic keyboards with a touch of eeriness invaded my ears for almost 5 minutes with someone speaking with a bizarre voice at some moment. The track was repetitive, had almost no variation and unoriginal. In other words: boring.

Then the only real track and redeemer of the demo, ''Ad Infinitum (Dark I)'' started. I actually recognized the song because it looked to be some more primitive and gothic-sounding version of ''Ad Infinitum (Dark I: The Expectation)''. The track is definitely good, but with the horrid vocals, annoying keyboards and bad production they pretty much only showed their potential. And it is what this demo is all about, the potential of the band in one track because the rest is pretty much fillers and attempts at gothic instrumentals.

The actual last song of the demo, ''Nothing (Monologue)'' isn't much more than the name of the song itself (I will spare you any bad joke); a simple guitar riff with no distortion repeated again with almost no variation with one of the guys speaking in the background and again for something like 5 minutes. So more than half of the demo is pointless instrumentals.

Oh and then comes the real fillers, an instrumental version of ''Fire of the Eternal Time'' as if it was not instrumental enough and a rehearsal version of ''The Unity (Space of Unconsciousness)''. Though I like that song, I don't see why they would release it on their demo as it was recorded a year later and show some improvement over the demo. The sound is pretty much as bad as the rest of the songs but is better played, the keyboards sound better (while not being too exciting) and Thurios has improved a lot his vocals. But to me, these tracks were inserted either: A) To fill space B) To make the listener put more attention on a latter, better Astrofaes and to take out one of the bad point of the first song of the demo (though your attention is more on the crappy keyboards) or C) Both.

It comes as a surprise that Thurios, one of the main guys behind Hate Forest, Drudkh and of course Astrofaes, ever released something like that. I also never thought he could do vocals that bad, he sure has improved a lot. You can clearly see some potential here but this is a much pointless demo, probably to satisfy their urge to release something or a song they were really proud of. I can't really recommend this to anyone, maybe Astrofaes die-hard fans but this doesn't sound like anything they ever did with the exception of the rehearsal track (and if you take out some elements of ''Ad Infinitum (Dark I)''). Being ''really'' curious may be a good enough reason to bother finding this tape. Other than that, you have been warned.