Armin van Buuren – Intense

Review

From the first sweep of strings on the title track, Intense makes its mission clear — to fuse the grand emotion of orchestral music with the pulse and power of trance. Armin van Buuren builds this album like a cathedral of sound, each track rising and falling with deliberate majesty. It’s the kind of record that refuses to sit quietly in the background; it demands to be felt.

Songs like “This Is What It Feels Like” and “Alone” pull EDM into pop’s orbit without losing their spiritual core, while deeper cuts like “Pulsar” and “Last Stop Before Heaven” deliver that euphoric weightlessness only trance can offer. Every transition feels cinematic — a seamless glide between the physical and the emotional.

What sets Intense apart is its sense of scope. Armin isn’t chasing the drop; he’s chasing transcendence. Even a decade later, the record stands as both a love letter to the genre and a reminder of what happens when you give electronic music the space — and the soul — to breathe. - Marcus