New York City-based sibling quartet Infinity Song talk touring, transformation, and their new album, ‘Metamorphosis Complete.’
Stream: ‘Metamorphosis Complete’ – Infinity Song
It’s our job to articulate life not for ourselves, but for the world… We’re connected to storytelling.
One by one, the four members of Infinity Song blip onto a Zoom screen.
It’s a hot Sunday afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona, and the band is right in the middle of touring their newest album, Metamorphosis Complete (released June 14 via Roc Nation).
Thalia “Momo” Boyd, one of the group’s vocalists, gives a quick rundown of the day so far, the most recent event being a quick rest stop for some pizza before sitting down to chat.
Abraham Boyd, the eldest sibling, chimes in on life on tour. They’d just done three sold out shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego before arriving in Phoenix. The high of the previous shows was still ringing.
“I think Los Angeles possibly ranks as one of the best shows we’ve ever done,” he says. “It was electric, it was special, it was next level. So it’s really been exciting to perform for the fans.”
The success of their live shows is a product of the musical atmosphere they’ve cultivated since their first album release in 2015. Nine years later, they’ve arrived at Metamorphosis Complete, the successor to their most recent EP, Metamorphosis.
“The first iteration of Metamorphosis was very authentic and organic and reflected where we were as a band,” Abraham explains.
“We felt at that time we were facing headwinds in so many different ways and so the music and the lyricism really just reflected that.”
The same themes that allude to the struggles of change, transformation, and unsteady futures naturally carried over to the new album.
Track five, Sinking Boat, invites the listener to question what’s worth saving with the lyrics, Why should I worry about rocking a sinking boat? It’s all going down and we’re majoring on the minor notes.
Despite the darker undertones the lyrics hold, the band feels that pushing themselves in the direction of unabashed honesty was freeing, creating a certain ownership over their creativity. There was a celebratory element found in exploring this new ground as songwriters, even though the lyrics themselves don’t strike as overtly joyous.
“It was a flex of confidence,” Abraham says. “It was us being confident in our creative process and who we are as a band.”
There’s a specific song that comes to mind when the band talks about fearlessness in expression on Metamorphosis Complete. Thalia dives into writing the viral hit, “Hater’s Anthem,” who’s lyrics quite plainly profess, “I love the way it feels to be a hater, something so sweet about thinking that I’m better.”
Despite the brashness of the statement, the song and the group received applause for their relatability and honesty on social media, with one post using the song’s audio amassing 233.3K views.
The praise the song has received lies in contrast to the hesitancy Thalia felt as she began to write it. Before “Hater’s Anthem,” the expectations and possible judgments of others had the habit of infiltrating Thalia’s creative process, stopping her from writing altogether.
“It was just perfectionism and that’s not healthy,” she explains.
“Hater’s Anthem” was a response to the constant self-inflicted pressures of always needing to say the “right” thing.
“It was just kind of a bit of a rebellion for me personally when writing that,” Thalia says. “Ever since then, every time I write I strive to reach that level of honesty as an act of rebellion against that programming that is in most human beings that tells you to behave and tells you to follow the rules and do what is expected of you.”
Thalia’s personal journey isn’t the only one accounted for in the creative process of the four-piece group. Collaboration and respect for the individual are always in practice in equal parts for the siblings.
“I think, specifically in this journey into soft rock, one of our big goals has been individuality and understanding that one of the philosophies of rock, and music in general, is being your own person and being an individual in the midst of the masses,” Thalia says.
Many of the songs on Metamorphosis Complete started as lyrics written by a member who then brought it to the group to see it through the rest of the creative process.
The album’s title track, “Metamorphosis,” was originally Angel’s vision, an idea she wanted to articulate about a journey of transformation through hard times and the acknowledgement that things were only just beginning.
Thalia came along, adding a chord progression, a verse, and pre-chorus that she had already written six months prior – and it just so happened to fit.
“Most of the time it’s individual and that is another way that we make sure each of our voices [are] heard. If you have something to say in the season, say it. Say it in this song,” says Thalia.
The stories told through the music, at times intentionally not rooted in personal experiences, are never meant to solely embody the experiences of Infinity Song.
They see themselves as canvases for a bigger picture.
“It’s our job to articulate life not for ourselves, but for the world,” Abraham says. “It’s not all about what we’re doing, or what we’re feeling, or what we’re going through. It’s, ‘how can I put this into song?’ Whether it’s really me or whether I’m not here – we’re not so connected to autobiographical writing. We’re connected to storytelling.”
The musicality of the album also undergirds the lyrics, sending the listener to cinematic landscapes by way of swooping instruments and airy guitars.
Israel, who’s a vocalist and guitarist in the band, describes the process of crafting the new album’s sound.
“I know that we wanted to create an experience, but I think crafting the music was the same as when it came to the lyrics – it was just very honest and very us,” says Israel. “We just put a little bit of the universe that already existed in our minds onto recording.”
Despite the full-circle journey Metamorphosis Complete eludes to, the group knows that they’re far from reaching their final form.
“It’s not about arrival,” Abraham says. “It’s not saying ‘we’ve arrived and we’re this great band. We’re rock stars.’ It’s completion, it’s the period at the end of the sentence, it’s this specific story is complete.”
“There will be other stories, there are new stories that are being written and new songs that are being written, but this story is complete and it’s a complete picture.”
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Watch: “Slow Burn” – Infinity Song
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© John N. Adams III
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