interview: utopia in the metal realm of Infinity Overture (Denmark)

Interview: Infinity Overture (Denmark)


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Infinity Overture (Denmark)
Power/heavy/symphonic metallers Infinity Overture’s “Kingdom of Utopia” impresses with traditional metal singing, upbeat, rocking songs and an elegant sound quality, and highlights very talented guitar work.
The skilled musicianship and the lush production gives this a fantasy regal metal feel. The singing, the guitar riffs and solos, and the songs are probably the most outstanding things about this album; of course, listeners will find other great things they like about it.
Explore to find skilled, talented musicians succeed at the chosen art. In short, for those into talented guitarists, singers and songs. Niels, the guitar wizard, answered these questions.
www.myspace.com/welcometoinfinity

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“Kingdom of Utopia” is high quality music! Have you been able to promote it in Denmark and how have people responded?
Hi Mauricio, thanks a lot for the kind words. Yes, we are based in Denmark, and we have been promoting the album a little bit live in Denmark until now, but we will play more shows in 2010, and we have a festival in Belgium also. And well, this music is not popular in Denmark unfortunately

Did Niels write all the music for the song “Wonderland”?
Yes, I (Niels Vejlyt) wrote all the songs, and when I did the album, I just had musicians play the parts, but thankfully we are now a complete band. Miro (a producer) did some of the film score style parts

Were the solos written before or in the studio for the song “Kingdom of Utopia”? Is the background sound keyboards, synth?
The guitar solos we written in the studio, which was a friend who owned, so I did not pay studio time when I recorded the guitars. The drums was another story, Me and Mads Wolf did those in a pro studio, but Mads was just a session player, Jakob Vand is now the Infinity Overture drummer. Miro is playing the keyboards, and the orchestrations I did is a programmed sequencer

Were the lyrics for “Oceans of Time” ready before the music?! How much sings here Ian Parry and Lene Peterssen?
Oceans of Time is a funny story, since I wrote all the songs and lyrics for the music, I also came up with the titles of the songs, but then Ian redid the lyrics, and we kept the Oceans of Time title, and he came up with a story for that title. It is actually a friend of mine called Anne Karine who did the female vocals on Oceans of Time, because at that time in the process, I had not met Lene.

How do you play those wonderful solos?! Your fingers should fall off! When did you start playing? You have instructional dvds?
Ha Ha, thanks, I have been playing guitar for about 20 years, I did some instructional releases for Chops from Hell and one for Shred Academy, and they are among other available from my own website www.nielsvejlyt.dk, the website just had a new design and lots of great new features. I’m doing a new instructional dvd called “Advanced Arpeggios,” its very high quality, as opposed to the video quality in the old ones I did. Yes you can learn to shred from them if you have the discipline not to give up.

There’s a serious disease afflicting many youth: instead of learning to play their instruments and writing intelligent lyrics, they prefer “chug-chug-chug” guitar and lyrics about “sex with zombies,” etc. Can you help to cure this disease?
Ha Ha, no, actually I myself like a lot of different styles of music and metal of course, for me its important to find the qualities in all music.

Your idea of “utopia” of course concerns peace. Do you think that patriotism—the patriotism of an imperialist power like the U.S.—(“the United States is the greatest country”; and other such arrogance) has the purpose of supporting the government’s wars/occupations/invasions all over the world?
Actually Ian came up with the lyrics for Kingdom of Utopia, and he is much more politically involved than I am. And basically I don’t think its a good idea to think less of other cultures, every nation and human being has great qualities I think

Currently, there are hundreds of Danish troops in Afghanistan!! Are you prepared to support the Danish government’s participation in these wars in the Middle East for 10, 20 years?!
Well, as I said, I’m not that involved in politics, so its a bit tough for me to answer, but I think a lot of things can go wrong if people or soldiers enter a country, and they don’t respect the people in the country, on the other hand, maybe some of them are doing good, and helping people, I really don’t know.

Does Mads Damgaard play a six-string bass? Does it open up a whole series of other musical possibilities?
Mads Damgaards bass lines did not end up on the album, Olaf Reitmeier did some of the lines, and Kyle Honea did some, they are very different in style, but I completely adore their work on the album.

Finally, have you noticed that Infinity Overture’s singing often has a similar grit as Biff from Saxon?!!!!
I personally don’t have much experience with Saxon, but I remember someone else saying that. THE END.