Interview with Maria Brink from In This Moment By Greg Giles

MWE: Los Angeles’s IN THIS MOMENT is a fairly new band on the ever popular woman–fronted metal scene. What sets you apart, Maria?

MB: I think that, you know, I always get that question asked to me, and it’s almost silly. Not being rude to you…

MWE: Damn it, the first question sucks.

MB: I think that there are a million bands out there that are
guy-fronted…like, how come they don’t ask men that question?

MWE: They might.

MB: “You’re a male fronted band, what sets you apart from every other male fronted band?” I just think that people have got to listen to it and hear it, and I think we’re different. I think everybody is different and individual.

MWE: Tell us all about IN THIS MOMENT’s inception, because a lot of people aren’t really going to know IN THIS MOMENT until after OZZFEST, when you’re unleashed.

MB: Everyone in the band…really came together, and everyone is really influenced by a lot of different music, you know what I mean. We’ve been together for almost three years, so it’s all like we came together. We didn’t know each other before that, and everybody was influenced by different types of music. My guitar player is a full on “metal” dude, that’s it. You couldn’t get him to listen to anything else. My other guitar player, he likes AFI, THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS, THRICE, and all kinds. My drummer loves jazz, and I love everything from SARAH Mc LAUGHLIN to the DEFTONES, PANTERA, everything. I like a lot of melodic stuff, too. I think it was like this war of all of us together that kind of formed what we’ve become.

MWE: You’ve got to like having a jazz influenced drummer.

MB: He’s a really great drummer. He really is.

MWE: Who’s the key song writer, or lyricist?

MB: I write all lyrics. I could never sing anyone else’s lyrics, I don’t think. Unless it was like a story that they told me that really touched me and was something that I could be passionate about feeling when I sing, but, I write all my own lyrics. The music process we do all together. It’s a huge collaboration between everybody.

MWE: So, you’ve got one hell of a manager. His name is “BLASKO”, he plays bass for OZZY OSBOURNE, in case you weren’t aware of that.

MB: He’s rad.

MWE: How’d you get hooked up with BLASKO?

MB: Actually, “My Space”. We got our “My Space” pretty pumping and going big, because basically, before we had management or a label, we wanted to start touring independently. We thought if we could get our “MY SPACE” really big, then when we tour the country, people in Florida will know who we are. The only way they could know who we are is through “MY SPACE”. It was going pretty well, and BLASKO got word. Someone told him about us, and he wrote us on “MY SPACE” and said “I like your music”…and he just came over to our house. We jammed for him in our living room.

MWE: Were you shitting your pants?

MB: I was really excited, yeah. This band, ever since the beginning, has been magical. Everything has been happening really well for us.

MWE: The CENTURY MEDIA RECORDS hook-up came before or after meeting BLASKO?

MB: After. We were getting interest from certain labels, but he already had a really good relationship with them, and he kind of brought our stuff to them. Right off the bat…we all just clicked very well.

MWE: Do you think BLASKO had something to do with the OZZFEST slot or was that just you guys?

MB: Um, I don’t know because this year is pretty kind of underground. There are a lot of bands that aren’t necessarily huge…you saw the line-up, right? There are bands you don’t hear about all of the time. Maybe we had help from him. Our other manger runs the entire second stage of OZZFEST. Maybe we had that in our favor, but I think that the label itself, plus our album’s doing well so far, so I think it’s just a collaboration, I guess. I’m sure it couldn’t hurt, right?

MWE: Do you anticipate that the OZZFEST exposure is going to “break” your band in a good way?

MB: We can only just keep doing what we’re doing, and that’s working as hard as we can and we’re playing a bunch of festivals before OZZFEST in Europe. Huge festivals, like forty-thousand people. We’re going to get tons of exposure there. Just to have the exposure, to play in front of that many people every day, we can hope that it’ll bring us to a new level, but if it doesn’t, we’re not going to cry and stop doing what we’re doing.

MWE: Forty-thousand people? A year ago, how many people were you playing in front of?

MB: Probably three hundred.

MWE: Isn’t it awesome? From three hundred to forty-thousand…

MB: Yeah it is. We’re so relentless. We work so hard. We really do.

MWE: Did the label, management, and producers push the band when you were in the studio, to become more commercially viable, or did you guys just go in there and do what you do?

MB: No, we went in there with our stuff and little things were taken out, like if the song was too long, but nothing was formed into something we weren’t.

MWE: You’re new to the touring scene on this massive of a level, but do you have any crazy road stories, yet?

MB: I think we’re just boring. When we ended the KITTIE, WALLS OF JERICHO tour we’d play pranks on stage…but nothing to crazy, yet. Knock on wood. I hope nothing bad happens, but we’ve got to start living it up a little and get some cool, crazy stories, because we get asked this a lot, and I’m like, “You know what, we’re lame”.