Intrinsic are a prog metal band who have been together for over a decade. In a genre that is unknown to many, the four piece have an explosive energy about them that is undeniable, perfectly blending the two genres aforementioned together. Influenced by jazz and synthwave too, there is so much to love about Intrinsic.
They released their long awaited debut album 'Event Horizon', with lead single 'Deva' paving the way for their highly unique and heavily captivating sound. We sat down with them to go through their journey so far, their album and everything in between, exclusively for flex:
Hey Intrinsic! Tell us a bit about each member of your band!
James: I’m one of the two guitar players and one of the founders of Intrinsic. I’ve been playing guitar for about 18 years now. Outside of Intrinsic, I work for Apple as a Genius Administrator, which is my full time gig. Most of my time is usually spent either playing guitar, watching TV/movies, or keeping up with MN sports (I’m a huge Vikings fan).
Chris: I’m the other guitarist in Intrinsic and I love disc golf, dogs, and Trailer Park Boys. I’ve been playing guitar for about 12 years and am a founding member of Intrinsic. As my regular day job, I’m a mechanic at Hennepin RestoMods, where we specialise in vehicles anywhere from the 50’s up to modern day cars and trucks.
Dallas: I’m the vocalist and the third founding member of Intrinsic. Right now, I’m working as a plumbing apprentice and will be going to trade school for it soon here. I’m big into DnD and regularly host sessions at my place.
Erin: I’m the drummer for Intrinsic; I joined the band back in December 2018/ January 2019. I’m a huge sci-fi and Star Wars fan and love being outdoors. Right now, I’m a drum instructor for Klash Drums and play in the cover band Shirts and Skins.
You really smash the prog metal vibe and it's so impressive, has this always been the band's sonic direction?
Pretty much! We bounce around different variations of what one could interpret as prog metal, but it’s all prog metal nonetheless. That’s part of our journey to hone the identity of this band; how can we harness all these different variations into one cohesive and distinctive sound?
Since the start of Intrinsic we strive, song to song, to better refine our ability to capture the emotion of the song. So while yes, it’s much closer to what we want to continue to produce, its not done evolving; we’re always looking to stretch our limits and keep developing the “Intrinsic” sound.
Who are your metal heroes?
We have a long laundry list of musical heroes and even have some influences that are starkly different from one another. As far as cornerstones of our influences, bands like BTBAM, Fallujah, The Contortionist, Tesseract, and Periphery all come to mind initially. There are also a lot of bands that we may not sound a whole like but certainly have shaped the way that we’ve grown up as musicians; bands like Erra, Veil of Maya, After the Burial, Plini to name a few. When you listen to so many bands, it’s hard to put all of our influences together, but that’s part of the process, right?
'Deva' is a highly euphoric track. What inspired this song?
Deva was inspired by a scene in the album where our character is faced with immense and mysterious natural beauty. So we tried to emulate that wonder with a performance that is intense as it is soaring. From the instrumental sense, the main ostinato was an idea our former bassist came up with that acts as the core for the most of the song. From there we played around with moving it in different positions around the fretboard, different keys, and even different ways to execute it like swinging it or double picking it and speeding it up.
How has the album campaign gone? We know this was a long time in the making for you guys!
The campaign has been admittedly slow; we all have full time jobs outside of Intrinsic that make it difficult to keep things like that going strong and give it the full attention it deserves. However, a lot of the reception around it so far has been pretty positive. We’ve even had the opportunity to talk about the creative process with others on podcasts and radio shows like Roar of the Underground and Ritual Madness Podcast, which has been extremely rewarding. Hopefully we get more of those opportunities.
Watch the video for 'Deva' here:
And lastly, are there plans to take 'Event Horizon' out on Tour?
We would love the opportunity to do so, but as of right now there isn’t anything planned. That is one short term goal of ours, though. We certainly want to explore more of the areas outside of the Twin Cities and outside of Minnesota in general.