Closure

At this stage in their career, Intrinsic had ditched much of the power metal and traditional thrash metal stylings of their debut and were now sharing a kinship with the groove heavy of thrash of Exhorder, Pantera and Machine Head. Accusations of 'chasing trends' could be thrown but Intrinsic were always a band who did things their way and we'd prefer to see them as evolving as opposed to merely plagiarising the commercially successful acts of the day.

Never one’s to turn their back on the classics, Intrinsic retained the Nevermore-esque progressive edge which informed much of their lost album Nails (an album that should have been huge if released back in the early 90s) to provide some much needed diversity and technical / progressive nous.

“Up For The Slam” was the true winner, a chest-beating exercise in hyper-grooves which bled positivity and hit hard. However, Intrinsic were always much more than a one-trick pony and the grunge-esque stylings of “Falling In” would have been right at home on Alice In Chain’s seminal Dirt, while the left-field Zeppelin meets Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young-isms of the semi-acoustic “Nothing Special” may well take more than a few listeners by surprise.

As is probably evident, these extreme departures in sound don’t necessarily make for a ‘fluid’ listening experience but, as a result, you could certainly never label Closure as boring or predictable!

Closure may have originally suggested that Intrinsic knew their time was coming to an end but they returned in 2015 with the long overdue release of Nails and a new album is, hopefully, on its way…..you can expect something special and, no doubt, unpredictable!