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As a rule, intensity should always fuel art. This does not mean the emotion conveyed needs to be negative, but the artist needs to harness intensity in order to create something lasting. How many times in recent memory can you say that you felt intense emotion coming from a metal record? In the age of compression and technical tomfoolery, only a handful of bands give you that well-needed gut check.

That dose of reality in all its hideous beauty.

One band who currently create music that you feel the intensity in every gnarly riff and spittle-flecked vocal line is Winnipeg, Manitoba’s KEN Mode.Entrench, the band’s fifth full length, is their greatest conveyance of intensity into music thus far. This is no small feat considering 2011’s Venerable saw the band reach their potential by finally translating their intimidating live show onto wax.

Producer Kurt Ballou played a major part in that, but for Entrench, KEN Mode have invested in the skills of Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Norma Jean), and this partnership has resulted in a larger sounding LP that manages to retain the vehemence of the band’s live show.

Musically, inspiration continues to come from noise rock’s most wanted: Unsane, Today Is The Day, Harvey Milk and The Jesus Lizard. However, KEN Mode implement the influence of these bands and ramp up the AM Rep-styled aggression tenfold to the point that, sonically, they now rub shoulders with the Converges and Gazas of our world.

Take opener “Counter Culture Complex.” The bucking-bronco rhythms that Unsane made their name from are wound so tight that the song becomes uncontrollable. Entrench splices these frantic, up-tempo numbers (“Your Heartwarming Story Makes Me Sick” / “Secret Vasectomy”) with slower emissions whereby the swinging bass-lines sound polluted beyond salvation and the gravelly riffs heave, churn and corrode (“No; I’m In Control” / “Figure Your Life Out”).

The variation in tempo and feel means that KEN Mode move with a different but no less determined stride from song to song. But noticeably, despite this difference in tempos, the intensity of the music does not diminish; even when the band venture into spidery post-rock on “Romeo Must Never Know.” This song works in the context of the record because it feeds off of tension and builds and subsides without stepping into clichéd territories. KEN Mode and, more specifically, guitarist and vocalist Jesse Matthewson have clear understanding that tension as dynamic is just as effective as intensity.

Matthewson is a quite the keen manipulator of tension. His ability to move from a whisper to a bile-filled roar, both vocally and with his guitar, charges Entrench with a restless energy. Whether using Slint-like slow release on the previously mentioned “Romeo Must Never Know,” or smothering the watertight rhythm section in angular blasts while screaming it out with Botch’s Dave Verellen on “The Promises of God,” the anxiety of the music is assumed, and accentuated once you take his bleak lyrics into consideration.

In the afterglow of the lavish finale, “Monomyth,” all of the above comes together and Entrench radiates as a powerful paradigm on how to twist tension and turn the intensity into art. There is a lesson to learn here for lesser bands, while the creative incline continues for this Canadian trio and shows no signs of stalling.

(released March 19, 2013 on Season Of Mist)



Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.