Album Review: Intent - Exile
Reviewed by Carl Black
Can you remember the moment when you heard Pantera for the first time? What was going through your head? If you're anything like Scott Ian it would be “wow…. how the hell did they do that?" This was in reference to Dimebag Darrell’s guitar tone. The drummers amongst you may have thought how do those bass drums sound like that? They are not “dry as a bone”. They're big, baggy and wet sounding and up front in the mix.
If you had similar feelings when listening to Pantera for the first time regarding the bass drums, this album is for you. Bass drums on this album smother and dominate everything. They are bigger and baggier than anything that Vinne Paul managed to pull together on vinyl and unfortunately, overshadows a lot of what Intent do. It leaves you with a “St Anger” feeling where a dodgy mix of a certain instrument can influence your whole opinion of the record.
If you can listen past these massive, baggy bass drums, you will find a sophomore album from the Arizonians that has a relentless pace. The riffs and songs are fast. The solos are screaming. The unit is very tight. Each song starts off with a huge intro riff that lasts between forty seconds and a minute with no singing. A chorus of such may well happen. Solos are interspersed throughout each song in plentiful supply. Riffs can interchange and interchange freely.
It all sounds pretty neat and tidy. And on the whole…. it is. It's a thrash metal album for thrash metal lovers. But it doesn't really move the paradigm from the first song to the last. It's fairly one paced throughout and ideas and riffs are not elaborated or jammed out to take any of these songs to a new level. It’s all one texture, one flavour. Only two songs change the tempo, 'Changing The Axis' and 'Time'. These songs slow the pace somewhat. But they stay within the Thrash remit too much and have not taken too many risks or changed the Thrash blueprint too much.
The album feels like one big song and very little differentiation occurs. It makes for a tenacious listen. Intent have got a bedrock of thrash metal running through them and they can play extremely well. They need to come up with some big ideas to drag people in and make them stay.
