ALBUM REVIEW: Severed Within – Intonate

Since changing their name from DEATHLEHEM in 2013 and shifting their musical focus towards a much more progressive and technical take on death metal, Montreal’s INTONATE have seemingly gone from strength to strength. Their debut album under the INTONATE moniker, The Swerve, showcased a much more expansive and impressive sound that garnered the band plenty of acclaim, as well as getting them signed to Willowtip Records. The follow up to that record, Severed Within, comes just under five years after its predecessor, and sees the music take a darker and more aggressive turn, making for a more intense version of the bands trademark atmospheric sound.

Sever is an incredibly intense start to the record, with monstrous guitars and equally punishing drums crafting a huge, impressive sound, interspersed with some great, slick melodies and dense, gutturals, blending the aggression of death metal with a powerful, catchy edge that immediately draws the listener in, setting a lofty bar for the rest of this record to surpass.

Within takes the underlying groove of the previous track and makes it one of the cornerstones of this song’s sound, with the chunky guitar sound and dissonant, disjointed leads providing an unsettling, weighty backdrop to the bestial roar of the vocals that injects a slight, unnerving progressiveness into the INTONATE sound. Once again, the expansive quality of the sound, alongside its decidedly heavier moments, make for an eclectic, but ultimately savage, sound.

Yearn, another lengthy offering that utilises a gargantuan guitar sound to great effect, retains the discordant elements of the last track, but seems to develop the ideas laid down on it, with more intricate sections from the drums and lead guitars lending a technical edge to the mix, whilst peppering plenty of rabid bursts of cacophony throughout, punctuating the tighter musicianship on display with fiercer parts that work extremely well.

Wander, with its hazier, atmospheric sound and cleaner tone, is a dark but hypnotic piece of music that flavours the meaty rhythms, prominent bass-lines and bellicose vocal deliveries with a bleak, brooding sound that makes this instantly memorable, and more emotive and engrossing than the preceding three songs on the record. The sound, as a whole, is much more diverse, with varied melodic flourishes keeping the music interesting, making this fairly punchy track one of the more imaginative to feature on the album.

Prolong has a slightly rawer production and more frenetic approach to song-writing, with muscular, swaggering rhythms and jarring moments giving everything a sharper, more visceral sound right off the bat, with the song gradually morphing into a far more cavernous affair with subtle progressive passages and grandiose, minimalist ones, taking the listener across the whole range of the bands sound. As a result, it proves to be an ever-changing, immersive mix of primitive death metal, with a polished, technical finesse that serves as a suitably magnificent climax to this incredibly varied album.

Although many of the elements that made The Swerve are present on here, there has been a marked shift that has occurred in the band’s sound. The focus on outright technicality, although still very much on full display at times, has given way to a much more progressive and atmospheric sound, with coarse, chaotic moments peppered liberally throughout to inject a rabid edge to the proceedings. It’s a musical shift that works extremely well however, and it really shows off how versatile and impressive the core aspects of the INTONATE sound are, allowing them to head into a different musical direction whilst retaining a distinct sound that marks them out from many of their peers.

Rating: 8/10

Severed Within is out now via Willowtip Records.

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