Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Eli Litwin, the mastermind behind Intensus, has been the guest of this interview with us about his recent release “The World Now, Still”. We talked about music, jazz, live shows and more!
Hello Eli and welcome on Chaoszine, how are you doing at the moment?
Eli Litwin: Thank you! I’m a little rundown at the moment because I took my 10 year-old daughter to her first concert last night, got home at midnight, then woke up at 6:15 to go teach elementary school music classes all day…but I’m excited for my album release!
Fifteen years passed between the debut Intensus record and “The World Now, Still.” Aside from taking total control over the music, you also took on the lyrics and vocals for the first time on this project. How did stepping behind the microphone reshape your relationship with Intensus?
Eli Litwin: Writing all the lyrics and performing all the vocals made it much more personal and meaningful for me. I went through an important discovery process and cathartic release through its creation. When I made the first Intensus album, I just wanted it to be as unhinged and wild as possible. I didn’t feel confident that I would be able to deliver that same quality in the vocal department, so I enlisted friends that already screamed in metal and hardcore bands to be as intense as possible with their guest spots. For a long time, I thought I would release this new album under my own name, because of how personal it was, and how different it was musically from the first Intensus album. And I actually did release self-mixed portions of the album under my own name. But since this album came out of me first trying to make a second Intensus album in the original way, and being unsatisfied with the results, and then trying a lot of new experimental ideas that still built compositions out of improvisations, it remains connected to that core concept of the project. So I eventually realized I should still call it an Intensus album. In fact, I came to that epiphany after all the music was long finished, just this past summer, while I was at Fire in the Mountains, in Montana, as part of a life-changing 10 day road trip.
You constructed the album starting entirely from drum improvisations, building complex arrangements around spontaneous performances. As a drummer first, how do you prevent the rhythm section from overwhelming the song’s melodic and structural architecture?
Eli Litwin: I did a lot of improvisation, then chopped a lot of it up, and arranged the parts that I liked the best. So there’s a lot of stuff that didn’t get used, that would have gotten on the way of the songs. The rhythmic figures that I liked the best were the ones that stayed, and became the backbones for the song structures. Sometimes things were cut up and shifted around and repeated, to build cohesive song structures, whereas the original improvised takes were free flowing and unstructured.
Performing every single instrument on a record can be liberating, but it also eliminates external checks and balances. How do you know when a track is truly finished when you are the sole judge and jury?
Eli Litwin: I did send a couple unfinished pieces to close friends occasionally, seeking feedback about song structures. But for the most part, I just kept going until it felt done. It was really an amazing discovery process how these songs revealed themselves to me in a way I could not have expected. Usually, it was pretty clear to me when a song was done or needed something else. I just had the feeling that it was complete.
“The World Now, Still” spans a staggering variety of genres—from metallic hardcore, doom, and industrial to electronic passages and free jazz. Do you view these subgenres as separate tools in a toolbox, or as a single, fluid language?
Eli Litwin: For me, it is definitely a single, fluid language. It’s the music of my mind and heart. If I was shifting between different genre sounds from one section of a song to another, I didn’t really think, “now I’m gonna do a death metal part, and then a pop chorus.” I just did what I felt like the song needed. Once it was all finished, I was able to kind of step back and realize that I was weaving in and out of many different genres. It all comes from all the different music that has formed my own musical DNA over the years.
The title “The World Now, Still” carries an intriguing weight. Do you think that the political system is working for the average person anymore?
Eli Litwin: Not at all. It hasn’t for a long time, if ever. And certainly never for some groups of people. I’m no historian, well-read activist, or social studies teacher, so I can’t really speak to it in great depth. I just know that once I was old enough to think about the systems in place in our world, and recognize inequalities and power dynamics, I quickly realized that the world is a largely unfair place for pretty much anyone that wasn’t born into privilege and power.
Is there any plan to bring Intensus to the live stage?
Eli Litwin: I wish. I would love to perform this music live. But it is really dense, and I played every part. It would be an immense undertaking to find enough musicians close by that wanted to dedicate their time to learning and performing this music. I don’t even know what position I would play. I’d want to be the lead singer, center stage with a guitar in my hand, but I’d also want to play most of the drum parts. And to faithfully represent these songs live, with all, or even most of their layers, would require a 10 person band of instrumentalists that could all sing and scream. I started a jazz metal band a couple years ago. I wrote a bunch of originals and arrangements for it, and then had to put it on the shelf, due to life circumstances. But once I’m able to dedicate more time to an original band again, that project is coming off the shelf. That’s way more within reach than making Intensus a live band.
You hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Jazz Performance and Music Technology, alongside a Master’s in Music Education. How does your formal academic grounding in jazz improvisation influence the way you write extreme, heavy metal riffs?
Eli Litwin: My jazz education does not really inform my metal guitar playing at all. I’m self-taught on guitar, and I’m no expert. Drum set is what I’ve always played professionally, in any of my bands, and is what I studied in college, so I’m way more confident on that instrument than any other. But since I’m pretty decent at guitar, I feel confident writing some good riffs. I came to this idea of improvisation as a compositional tool after I had been playing lots of free improv shows in Philadelphia. Someone gave me a really nice compliment, saying that when I improvised, he would hear a compositional arc in the spontaneous music I was creating with others. That gave me the confidence to feel like I could actually create the skeleton of a song spontaneously, and then take my time to figure out and write the rest on guitar.
If a student who had never heard heavy or avant-garde music asked you why you choose to express yourself through extreme sounds, what would you tell them?
Eli Litwin: Heavy music has resonated with me on a deep level, ever since I was 12 years old. The visceral feeling I got from it was unlike any other experience, and I just wanted more and more. The extreme and experimental side of things gradually became the area that I gravitated towards, as I moved through different musical phases and discoveries. Expressing myself through this kind of music is just what comes most naturally. As for actually expressing my emotions through lyrics, it makes perfect sense to me that all the frustrations and anger that I was feeling about the things I was witnessing around me, but couldn’t do anything about, were best expressed in a visceral and intense way.
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me! Is there anything else you’d like to add to our readers?
Eli Litwin: I wrote a lot about my creation process for this album. If anyone is interested in a deeper dive into that, all that writing is all in the digital booklet that comes with a purchase on Bandcamp, and in the physical booklet for the CD and vinyl. AND I’ve started doing a series of song breakdown videos that I’m posting to my Instagram and YouTube pages. Links below! Thanks for your interest and thanks for the great questions!
Digital purchase: https://elilitwin.bandcamp.com/album/the-world-now-still
Physical Purchase: https://elasticstage.com/intensustheworldnowstill
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@elilitwinmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elilitwindrums/
