IN THIS MOMENT Preparing To Film 'Sex Metal Barbie' Video

Melanie Brehaut conducted an interview with IN THIS MOMENT guitarist Chris Howorth prior to the band's February 28 concert in Glasgow, United Kingdom. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On IN THIS MOMENT's musical evolution:

Chris: "I think it's ever evolving, but I think [IN THIS MOMENT's latest album, 'Black Widow'] is closer to what… It's not that we always wanted to sound like this; it's almost like we didn't really know what we were. We kind of just did what we felt every time, and we were just growing each time. And with 'Blood', when that happened, that kind of felt like, 'This is right.' And, obviously, it connected with more people and it seemed to expand the band a lot. So, with 'Black Widow', we went into that kind of with the only… The only stipulation was, 'Let's try to keep that same feel, but still grow and expand,' but it seems like we've kind of found our sound. But it was definitely a gradual process."

On how IN THIS MOMENT's songs come together:

Chris: "They come together in different ways. In the past, a bunch of people would be writing and bringing ideas to Maria [Brink, vocals]. With 'Blood' and 'Black Widow', both of those were the same, where it was Maria, our producer, Kevin Churko, and myself, and we basically plan out to be there. We show up. Everyone may have some little ideas, like a riff or two, or something; Kevin had some ideas, I had ideas, and so did Maria. We didn't have any songs. And we just start going through [the ideas] and [saying], 'I really like this,' or, 'I really like that.' We'll start with a vocal thing or a guitar thing, and then we just build a song one at a time. We'll start on one song and work on it until it’s kind of done, put it aside, and start working on another one. That's how we did both these albums, and it's a really, really cool process."

On Maria's deeply personal lyrics:

Chris: "You know, Maria is very brave. She always questions sometimes: 'Is this going too far? Should I be saying this?' But, for her, it has to be something that she's connected with — like something real that's happened to her, or an experience that she can relate with — or she just can't sing it. And I think that's part of the reason people are connecting with her so much on all of our albums. But it's always been like that. If she doesn't have kind of connection to it, she doesn't wanna sing it or do it. And with 'Black Widow', she again dug deep on a lot of songs and pulled out stuff. There's some real emotional moments on the record. But it wasn't planned. Like, she didn't even know, that one particular song where she breaks down, she didn't even know the producer was recording it. He sent it to us after we had already been done in the studio and everything. And we were like, 'Wow! This is crazy.' We actually had to cut it down; it was so long."

On what's next for IN THIS MOMENT:

Chris: "Well, we're getting ready… We come back from the U.K., and we have a little bit of time off — maybe a month, or three weeks. We're actually shooting a video for 'Sex Metal Barbie'. We're doing that maybe a week after we get back, and then we have a couple of weeks off. Then we're going on a big U.S. tour, doing all the festivals there, headlining some stuff. That's gonna take us through to the summer. And then we're putting together our summer and fall plans now. But we're definitely also trying to work in getting back over [to Europe] at some point this year, and it's gonna happen. We're definitely gonna follow up on this, because we were feeling it."