YOU’LL PROBABLY WANT TO PAY ATTENTION TO INTENSUS

Metal Blade’s latest sign is a band called Intensus, and by “band” I mean “one man project” — the man being  Eli Litwin, drummer of Knife the Glitter, Burden, Normal Love, and some other bands with whom I’m not really familiar (although I know that Gary Suarez is a KTG fan). The only piece of Intensus music I’ve been able to locate thus far is the above track, “Time Killer Shitter,” which features vocals by Jesse Korman from The Number Twelve Looks Like You — and it doesn’t really do that much for me. I mean, it’s fine, but if not for the pedigree, I don’t know that I’d ever have given it a second listen. (There are some other tracks that are allegedly available on Intensus’ MySpace page, but I can’t get the player to work!)

But I still think this album is, at the very least, going to be worth your attention, for the following reasons: a) Litwin has recruited some awesome guest vocalists, including Between the Buried and Me’s Tommy Rogers, A Life Once Lost’s Robbert Meadows, and East of the Wall’s Chris Alfano, to appear on the album, and b) even though process shouldn’t really be considered when evaluating a piece of art, the process for the creation of this particular record, as explained in the press release announcing the signing, sounds pretty cool:

“The process of creating Intensus began with one recording session in which Litwin improvised drum tracks for the entire album; start to finish, in one take. Over the course of the next year, he simultaneously wrote and recorded guitar tracks to build songs out of the improvised drum parts. Some guitar sections were first take improvisations as well, while others were written and recorded within 5-25 minutes. The general idea was to keep everything as spontaneous as possible. After all guitars were recorded, Litwin learned everything on bass and went through the same process. Once all of the music was completed, Litwin enlisted a number of singers to contribute vocals to the project. Each singer wrote his own lyrics but the final vocal performances were largely a collaborative effort with Litwin in the producer chair.”

So at the very least, I’m more than a little curious to hear the final product. I was never that big of a fan of Korman or TNTLLY, so part of me thinks I may have a more favorable reaction to the tracks featuring Rogers, Meadows, and Alfano (or even one of the other four guest vocalists on the album — Trophy Scars’ Jerry Jones, Burden’s Travis Weinand, Gypsy Wigs’ Evan Moore, and Ruston Grosse  — with whom I am also not very familiar). I tend to think that if someone I believe to be talented endorses a project but putting his name on it, that project probably has something pretty interesting going for it. Then again, there’s shit like this, so maybe I’m being overly optimistic.

Guess we’ll find out when Metal Blade releases Intensus’ self-titled debut later this year!

-AR