Intense

US Power metal from the UK

Interview with vocalist Sean Hetherington of Intense by Vera in March 2007

These days the press seems almost surprised when a proper metal band is not hailing from Scandinavia but from the UK. The music climate has changed there indeed with Britpop bands instead of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, with commercial tunes instead of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. But Intense is an exception that confirms the rules. Keeping the heavy metal flame burning, they recently released their second full length album called ‘As The Army Grows’. The right moment to ask vocalist Sean Hetherington some questions about the band he once revisited to be able to keep on playing metal. A true metal dude indeed!

‘Second Sight’ was a very good album. Were you a bit satisfied with the reactions concerning reviews, distribution and success?

After the break we had between ‘Dark Season’ and ‘Second Sight’ it was finally great to put a full album out and to have it out on a label. We were very unknown before ‘Second Sight’ and the album was received very well by most reviewers who were especially surprised that a metal band like Intense were coming from England. We were on a small label, so distribution was always going to be a little limited, it did get a little frustrating though as you want to reach as many people as you can with an album. We did sign a licence deal with NTS for a French only release which also meant some decent supports in France but unfortunately NTS went bust and we didn’t gain anything from that deal at all. Overall though I think ‘Second Sight’ made a lot of people aware of us and prepared the way for where we are now.

Now we are three years later and ‘As Our Army Grows’ is about to release. As the line-up has been quite stable for a longer time, first question is: did it change something in the writing process of this new album?

Yeah, you’re exactly right when you talk about a stable line up, even new recruit (ha ha) Steve Brine on bass has been with us nearly 3 years and it’s great when we all know each other so well and can count on each other. Adrian (Lambert) who played bass on ‘Second Sight’ wrote ‘The Winged’ and the intro and obviously he wasn’t’ around this time but the core writers for the band at the moment are Nick, Dave and myself. That’s not to say that the other guys won’t write in the future and if someone comes up with a great song in the Intense style then great… What did change this time is that the 3 of us have home studios now and could send our completed ideas around and work things out easier because of this. I have to say writing this time was easier also because we had more of an idea of how we’d record the songs and what could be done after having done it on ‘Second Sight’, some songs definitely grow in the studio and are enhanced which is really exciting.

You have an all English line-up. Does it mean that Intense is a band that comes together to rehearse a lot and many ideas come up while playing together instead of sending files?

Oops I dipped into this a little bit in the last question. (ha ha) We do rehearse a lot when writing particularly Nick, Dave and myself who live fairly near each other. When we put the songs together at our studios we get Neil and Steve down to record their bits too even in the writing process so we can work ideas out even then. We’re lucky too that Neil (drums) has his own rehearsal studio so although he lives the furthest away (2 ½ hours away from the rest of us) we usually drive up to his as we’re very comfortable in the room and it’s FREE.

You returned to the Thin Ice Studios with the Threshold guys Karl Groom and Richard West in charge of production. So I guess you were satisfied with their previous endeavours?

Previously we only worked with Karl though we kind of knew Richard. They’ve started working together more and Rich is very strong with vocal production and particularly keys (of course). Both guys are very similar and very laid back like us so it’s a joy to work with them. They are also both very good at drawing out great performances from you and I think this shows on this album. Richard offered his services to play keys for us and we jumped at the chance of having someone with his calibre play on the album, he took on our ideas very well too as well as incorporating his own. We were more than satisfied with ‘Second Sight’ and I think ‘As Our Army Grows’ was an improvement all around, if the next album has the jump in quality that we’ve seen with this one, it should be great (ha ha).

Anything more to tell about this recording process? What is the function of Karl and Richard at last, more technician or also adding ideas?

Due to the studio’s commitments the recording process was quite segmented which worked in our favour in the end as we could live with rough mixes of the songs whilst getting new ideas for them etc so worth the wait in the end. Karl and Rich both have input of course, they’re great musicians and both understand our style which really helps, they’ll make suggestions some of which we use and others we don’t. It’s very laid back and no one has their ego bruised at all. They take a great pride in their work and that’s really great that in the end you have 7 people who care a great deal about the album and how it sounds.

And why was the mastering done in Holland?

That was purely on the recommendation of Karl, we wanted to improve the quality from the last album on the mastering front and Peter was recommended to us. He does Threshold’s albums and has worked with Symphony X too which was recommendation enough and was great to work with. If Karl recommends someone you don’t have to worry if they’ll be good enough.

In the meantime you have done a small tour in the Netherlands and Belgium last year in November. Can you tell a bit more about this experience?

Yeah that was a blast and was thanks to a promoter friend of ours called Emillio (known online as Musketeer of Death) who took a gamble really, booking us even though he hadn’t met us. I’d heard good things about him from other English bands he’d worked with and he also asked about us to make sure we weren’t difficult to work with. We did 5 shows in all 3 in the Netherlands, 1 in Germany and 1 in Belgium over 5 nights which is a first for us and was quite full on without a day off especially as the first night in Amsterdam we got absolutely drenched as the rains came down on us. The major show of the tour was in Tilburg supporting Ruffians. Even though we only played the Batcave the facilities were superb and we were very well looked after, I had to say every show we played even though they were only small club shows were great and we were very appreciated which was nice. I was so happy that I got to play in front of some Dutch friends of mine who I’ve know since the ‘Dark Season’ days who have never seen Intense play, I was so relieved when they came down the front and started banging away that they didn’t think we sucked ha ha… We have our own splitter bus so it made it possible for us to do the tour without incurring too many costs other than hotels etc...

The artwork is really marvellous! How did you get in contact with Mattias Norén and how was it to work with him?

Yeah we’re really pleased with it. I think Mattias captured perfectly what we wanted. We wanted to try a different artist for this album and I just hunted around on the net and came across his site, sent the link over to the guys and they all went “Wow” lets use him. Mattias again is a very cool guy and easy to work with and I explained the idea for the cover to him and what it was based upon (the title is from the chorus of ‘Our Last Hope’, which is based upon the film Prophecy 3 the Ascent) I told him to rent the DVD and watch the film and he bought it, watched it and 2 days later came up with the final artwork which is pretty much how it looks now… amazing guy. He designed our booklet too, on-body print on the CD’s, the whole thing…

In ‘Temptress’ we hear some female vocals. Can you tell a bit more about the singer?

The singer on ‘Temptress’ is a friend of mine called Kara Sultan, I met Kara when Adrian was in the band as it’s his girlfriend and we’ve always kept in touch. She’d done some choral parts on “Path of the Dark” from Second Sight for us and is a great singer, this time I thought she’s be right for the ‘Temptress’ part and was kind enough to offer her services. Kara has sung in a few bands but probably the best know was the Clan Destined with Martin Walkier which has now ended unfortunately.

In the studio keyboards are played by Richard West. Is there a solution for live gigs? Do you have a keyboardist at the moment?

One of our biggest problems is getting a keyboard player for live work. Intense are quite a tight unit but a very friendly bunch (I think so anyway ha ha) but we’ve struggled to get someone in on a permanent basis. Part of the problem is that the keyboards are very much for atmospherics so there won’t be any keyboard solos in our songs and we have to get a keyboard player who doesn’t mind playing that role … we are talking to a friend of ours at the moment who plays in another band to see if our schedules can match up. We are fortunate that we can get away without keyboards but ultimately we’d like to have them to give the full Intense experience.

The album occludes with a trilogy. Now I am eager to hear some details about it! Is it a small concept? What about a theme in the lyrics, and so on…

Yeah ‘The Chronicles of The New Flesh’ was written entirely by Nick Palmer. It’s his dedication to David Cronenberg and particularly the film Videodrome which came out in the 80’s. The 3 songs each take you through main characters metamorphosis in the film and if you’ve seen it you’ll get it straight away, if not it might be worth hiring it as it’s a great film or if not hopefully you’ll enjoy the songs anyway.

Another big change is being signed by Napalm Records (one of my favourite labels!). How did you get in contact with them?

They’re my favourite label right now too ha ha. To be honest I didn’t know too much about them, when I was fielding the promos for the album Karl suggested Napalm as he’d heard good things about them from Edenbridge who had worked at Thin Ice and had recently been signed to Napalm. I emailed one of the guys to ask their opinion of the label and got good reports. It’s important for us to work with people we can get on with and trust; there’s no point at all being on a label and not enjoying the experience. We hadn’t heard anything back from them till we returned from our European shows and then an email and a phone call told me they were interested in signing us.

But I think you are the only power metal band there. What are your feelings about that?

I think there’s a couple of power metal bands there now but it doesn’t bother me either way. Max, the label boss told me how much they believe in Intense and they want to help make us a success and so far everyone I’ve dealt with at Napalm have been great, the amount of promotion they’re putting behind the band is excellent, and exactly what we want.

You completed the filming of the ‘Fear Is Not Enough’ videoclip recently. Can you tell a bit more about the making of…?

‘Fear Is Not Enough’ was our first decent budget video and we used a company that had worked with friends of ours called Visual Abuse who are based in London. I sent the song to the Director who had a listen to it, loved the song and wrote a “treatment” (idea) for the video. Nick and I met up with the producer to discuss ideas etc and we read the treatment and screwed up our ideas and threw them away and simply said lets go with that. The video is perfectly dark which really suits the song and has a lot of narration featuring some great actors in it with us being mainly in the choruses, It was shot over 2 days with the narration on the first day and our part on the 2^nd day, it was great fun and the total crew over the 2 days was something like 30 people which was crazy but the final result was great. We’re premiering it at Prog Power UK on March 31^st and after that it’s going onto magazines, TV shows etc; anywhere that will show it. It will also go online on our website and our myspace page. We already have “the making of” on our myspace page which was shot by the producer of the video and is great (even if the music is slightly strange) worth a look if you want a taster of the video. www.myspace.com/intense

You participated to the Heavy Metal Songfestival contest (I didn’t even know that exists J ) Please tell us what it was like and about your experiences with it?

Ha ha, I wouldn’t say we participated particularly, we got told we were in it from a post on our forum one day and then the result was posted. That was it, we came 7^th out of 41 or something like that which was cool but we did absolutely nothing for it…. very strange but still cool.

Are there tour plans to support the album?

We’re currently concentrating on promotion and then it will be on to planning shows… I’m hoping to sign up to booking agencies both here and in Europe and really want to get some decent supports as that’s something we’re lacked in the past. We’re very keen to play to larger audiences and show them what an Intense show is all about.

The album was recorded in 2005. Do you have already new songs in the pipeline?

The recording process started in 2005 but we actually finished it last year due to the studio commitments. The guys and I already have ideas for new songs and are writing at home already, there won’t be such a long wait for the next album that’s for sure.

And to round off this article: what are your best memories on a live show?

My best memory from a live show was when we opened up the main stage at the Bloodstock festival in 2004. We were on at a ridiculously early time of 11.55am and opening for Primal Fear, Children of Bodom and Sonata Arctica (among others) and worried that no one would be up and that they’d still be in bed drunk from the night before. To our amazement we were met by almost a full hall approx 2500 people who went crazy as soon as we stepped on stage and did so for all our 30 min set. I’ve never experienced such a rush as I did that day. We had the whole hall singing along to us it was a great, great day.


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