IN THIS MOMENT Members Talk New Album, Lineup Changes

Johnny Price of BareBonesMusic.com recently conducted an interview with vocalist Maria Brink and guitarist Chris Howorth of Southern California's IN THIS MOMENT. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

BareBonesMusic.com: The last year for you guys has been nothing short of [crazy]. It's enough to make a weaker band throw in the towel, but not you guys. What's that last year been like?

Maria: It's definitely been a crazy year for us. We lost two members right before doing ShipRocked and Soundwave in Australia and had to deal with that. We also knew in the back of our minds that we were going to be going into the studio at the first of this year to begin work on the new album and we had that to think about too. All the stuff that happened really motivated us, it sparked a fire in us creatively that I don't think we had ever felt before. I've referenced it to the blood of the phoenix as it rises from the ashes; it's like a re-birth for us on many levels. I also reference death a lot in it and I do want the fans to understand that I don't mean it literally. It's more about the phoenix dying and being born again.

Chris: I was totally shocked when we lost Blake [Bunzel, guitar] and Jeff [Fabb, drums]. We were taking our time and writing after getting back from Japan. We weren't hearing anything from the guys and it seemed really odd and then we finally heard that they had left. I remember telling Maria that we just needed ourselves and that we could do this. We were determined to make those guys sorry that they left. So, here we were short two members, plus we were without a manager. We were trying to find a manager when all of this went down. We had interest from some, but not any of the big names. In the meantime, we were working on demos and sending them to [producer] Kevin [Churko] and he was totally behind us, as well as the label. So, we went to Vegas with Kevin for a week before we went on ShipRocked and did two songs, "Blood" and "From The Ashes", and started sending them out. We started hearing back from a lot of the management teams, including ones that looked over us before. We ended up signing with In De Goot, who has an amazing roster including SHINEDOWN, HALESTORM and a bunch of others.

BareBonesMusic.com: I've heard the entire [new IN THIS MOMENT] album ["Blood"] and I think it's pretty amazing! I think a lot of fans are going to be really surprised at what they are going to be hearing. There's a lot of the IN THIS MOMENT sound that we are used to, but there's the incorporation of several new elements also. Was any of the album written before the loss of Jeff and Blake or was it created all created after that happened?

Maria: I had a lot of lyrics already written for the album, but I didn't use them. All of this was created after that happened. For me personally, it's as if a rebirth happened from the death that we felt. We were on fire and I hope that the fans can feel it when they listen to the album. I think we will also bring on new fans who may not have heard of us before just on the strength of this album. We're always experimenting and we did bring in some new elements. I like for something to move me and I hope it affects our fans that way too.

Chris: Jeff and Blake leaving kind of opened us up a bit and we went from the heart. We went a different route and it was more organic than ever before.

BareBonesMusic.com: What about this new image that you are projecting with all the guys dressing alike and the face paint?

Chris: We knew we were going into another stage of our career and we wanted to top everything that we had done to that point both musically and visually. We knew that we would hopefully be gaining some new fans that would be seeing us for the first time. We wanted to have some type of a look or image like KISS. So, there we were, sitting in the hotel making our own clothes. Travis is quite the crafter and came up with our pants. We were all like knitting hens in that room. [laughs]

Read the entire interview from BareBonesMusic.com.

Photo credit: Robert John Kley