Intensify plays next July 15th at The Hype.

Intensify is made up of five guys who love to play. Hughie Coles (Lead Guitarist, Manager) is 21, and went to Bramalea Secondary School along with his brother Joe Coles (Drummer). Tommy Patey (Lead Guitarist) 22 attended Turner Fenton Secondary School where he met 19 year old Sean McCaw (Bass). Jimi Maltias rounds up the line-up on lead vocals.

The band came together slowly and naturally. Hughie had left a band, and was looking for something that, he says, was "more my style". His brother Joe was only beginning to play the drums but along with Tommy they starting writing in the fall of 2002. Other members would come and go but these three would remain the core lineup. Jimi joined in December 2003, Sean joined right before our 4th show, in march 2004. Although most of the group has Newfoundland backgrounds, Jimi is half sri lankan, and Sean moved to Brampton 4 years ago from Singapore (before that he lived in Calgary).

When asked about Intensify's place within the Brampton music scene, Hughie is thoughtful and says "I feel we're in a very unique position with the Brampton music scene. we're far from the standard Brampton band, which mostly play post - hardcore , "Emo", or modern rock, whereas we are a thrash/death metal band. I guess you could consider us a black shirt in a sea of pink. Many consider us one of, if not the heaviest band based in Brampton right now. Which is kinda of against the grain at the moment."

Perhaps what is also unique about them is that band members play on the side in other bands for fun. Jimi and Sean are in a fantasy death metal band called Crimson Shadows. Jimi is also the bassist in a death/tech metal band called Apocryphal. The guys fill up the rest of their busy schedule "working and partying on the weekends".

Even though members find themselves spending time in other bands, there is no animosity amongst the others. Hughie explains "there's a mutual respect between most of the bands we play with, we all work hard at what we do and whether you enjoy someone else's style of music or not, we're all in the same boat. No one has time for childish egos and bickering, and we've had the good fortune playing with a lot of great bands, full of down to earth people. Everyone in the band is free to do what they want in their free time, and we know and hang out with all the guys in the other bands anyways (Apocryphal and C.S)."

Intensify's writing is influenced by their great predecessors in metal: Metallica, Slayer, Cradle of filth and cannibal corpse.  But their own composition of a song is very important to the band. "Usually we start with a riff, or an idea of what type of song we want (ie. sometimes we haven't written a really heavy song for a while so we'll approach it with that in mind), and then we basically just build it section by section, then arrange it and add vocals."

Everyone in the band has a different favorite of those they have written. For Hughie it's "untitled".  It is their opening lives song and is about "being fucked around by a girl, and just standing up and realizing that its not what you want."

At first their goal was just to play some shows and have some fun, "then once we started playing often and our goals were to play the opera house in T.O, and play some out of town shows, and now that we've done both of those, now our short term goals are to release an album, and do some light touring, we try not to look too far ahead and just do the best we can at the moment."

They have found it easy to build a fan base in Brampton. "We just show up and play and some kids really get into it." Their main fan base has been stretching from Brampton to T.O., through on-line promotion.

This Saturday's show is going to be a big one for Intensity. "We're really excited to play to DAME's crowd, which is new to us so we have an opportunity to get some new fans, and we're really lookin forward seeing Dali Circus. We played with the Nick Lee Band back in the beginning and its gonna be fun." Once again the band will be a black shirt in a sea of pink. But this time instead of being against the grain they'll be able to mix it up and blur the lines within the music scene to create one eclectic night of sound!



Visit the band's site at http://www.myspace.com/intensifyband