IN THIS MOMENT Singer Discusses Band's Musical Diversity

Justin Donnelly of Australia's The Metal Forge recently conducted an interview with IN THIS MOMENT frontwoman Maria Brink. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

On using MySpace as a launching pad for the group's debut album:

"We had a demo recorded that we made available on our MySpace site, and that was quite successful for us too, but not on the same level as 'Beautiful Tragedy'. So far, I'm really happy with the way the album has been going. We're all pretty excited about having been given the opportunity to make a real album, rather than a demo. You can really tell the difference too, given that three of those original demos turned up on 'Beautiful Tragedy'. They're kind of different-sounding arrangement-wise, but there were only a couple of slight changes at most. You wouldn't really call the differences huge-sounding, but obviously the production quality is much better. In the end, having the final product, with all the artwork and stuff finally out there is great. We're all really excited."

On IN THIS MOMENT's musical diversity:

"Well, I think that's good. It wasn't really intentional. It's just that we have some really diverse members in this band. I think that's really where it all comes from. One of our guitar players really loves straight-ahead metal. You know, the sort of stuff that's really heavy and intense-sounding. Then there's our other guitar player, who's really into alternative rock. But then when it comes to me, I love all kinds of stuff, especially the melodic stuff. I think it's just an amalgamation of everybody's influences and styles that's really developed into the sound that's present on our album. We didn't really want to focus on what we wanted or didn't want to be sound-wise when we were working on the songs. We just wanted to made sure that we all collaborated on everything, and making sure that everything we were doing felt right. We didn't want it to end up in discussions where we would talk about whether this song needed to be more metal, whether I needed to scream more in that song or whether I shouldn't sing quite as much in those songs because metalheads wouldn't like that. We just focused on what we wanted the songs to sound like, and it eventually developed into this."

On being labeled a "metalcore" act:

"I don't think we're metalcore. To me, metalcore is more like hardcore-influenced metal, with lots of breakdowns. I think we're a lot more diverse sounding than that. I don't know what genre you would put us into, and I'm always telling people that. When I'm trying to explain IN THIS MOMENT's sound to them, all I can say is that its diverse-sounding, with influences such as metalcore's breakdowns, metal in general and some melodic rock. I just tell people that they have to hear it for themselves, so that way they can make up their own minds."

Read the entire interview at www.themetalforge.com.