Intense- As Our Army Grows

Artist: Intense
Album: As Our Army Grows
Label: Napalm Records

"As Our Army Grows" is ten tracks of aggressive power metal released on Austria's Napalm Records. Even though Intense has been around since 1991, this is only their second full-length release. Since the late 90's, vocalist Sean Hetherington has rebuilt the band from the ground up. After disagreeing with his old bandmates over their wanting to go in a different direction, Sean started recruiting new members for the band. Finally getting their act together with the 2004 release of "Second Sight", Intense have shown themselves to be a solid band. Like a lot of similar bands, they use a dual guitar attack with Nick Palmer and Dave Peak laying down some decent riffs and solos. Sean's vocals are a bit different than most power metal vocalists, preferring to keep his vocals mid-range instead of the high-pitched vocals you may be used to. The strong backbone of Intense is supplied by the rhythm section of Stephen Brine on bass and Neil Ablard on drums. The last three songs on "As Our Army Grows" is actually a trilogy called Chronicles of the New Flesh. The three songs are interesting but would probably have worked better on an EP release as they don't seem to add anything to the album. Don't get me wrong, they don't detract from it either. As a whole I would say that "As Our Army Grows" is a solid release from these Brits. It's good enough that if you bought it you wouldn't be disappointed, but it's also not really a must have when it comes to this genre. Give it a chance, you might like it as well.