One of the newer bands making waves after a MySpace explosion is In This Moment. This group of musicians really went out and made themselves who they are through hard work and marketing. After blowing up on MySpace a few years ago, they were noticed by Blasko (Zombie and Ozzy fame) who signed them to his management company and got them out there for the whole world to see. With tight musicianship and writing from guitarist Chris Howorth and a killer lead vocalist in Maria Brink, they were poised to set the world on fire. That was a few years and three albums ago. They are still out tearing it up and creating a world where we can all live In This Moment… The Rockpit was lucky enough to be able to chat with Chris about the long strange journey.
Toddstar: Hey Chris. How are you doing today?
Chris Howorth: I’m doing awesome man. How are you bro?
Toddstar: Awesome. Thanks a lot for taking the time out for the Rockpit today. We really appreciate it.
Chris Howorth: No problem man. I really appreciate the interview.
Toddstar: First I want to throw out there, I took some photos of you guys at Mayhem last year in Detroit, that’s where I’m based here and it was one of the biggest thrills of my life because I’ve loved you guys since you guys came out. I took a picture of you actually pointing down at me and you made it your profile on Facebook. I just want you to know as a press guy, you also made my life when you did that. That was the coolest shit in the world.
Chris Howorth: Awesome man. It probably was a really cool picture. What picture was it, maybe I’ll remember it?
Toddstar: You were playing a white guitar & you pointed right down at me, um like from your finger tip all the way up. The fingertip was totally in focus & then it slightly got out of focus as it got to your face. You could see you were looking & pointing right at me.
Chris Howorth: Cool man.
Toddstar: Yeah it was really cool.
Chris Howorth: There were some cool pictures; that was definitely a cool one. I was “Yeah, that looks cool.”
Toddstar: Appreciate the compliment. Before we jump to what going on now, let’s jump back. I’ve got a question for you – you see so many bands go by the wayside now. You guys have been together roughly 6 years; you’ve put out 3 CD’s not including any singles or tour editions. I mean, you & Maria kind of set the pace and put this together. What’s been the secret to keeping that friendship so vital and productive over the last 6 years?
Chris Howorth: That’s a good question. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that, you know, Maria & I and everyone else in the band has wanted this for a long time and we dreamed about it when we were younger, you know, and we finally got this opportunity. You see bands come and go so much. I’m thinking about bands that when we were starting out trying to get going, that they were hopping and now you don’t even know where they are – are they broke up or are they together or anything? I mean we’ve never wanted that to happen to our band so were always trying to do better than the last time. And I know a lot of luck plays into this too. We just keep it focused because honestly, were not making a lot of money, it’s still a real big struggle for us to keep this thing going, but each album seems to keep doing better than the last and the opportunities we keep getting aren’t drying up so it just gives us just enough fuel to keep going.
You know, if it’s just out of reach, we’re just going to keep going for it. We just want to be able to do this and have some kind of security in our lives, you know, to be able to pay bills, have a car, and a place to live – not worry about it all the time which is what we do now. We all live with friends and family members. I think the fact that things just always seems to be better than the last time and it’s such a relief – it keeps us going, you know, we’re ready to do Number 4 now even though this one didn’t, ‘The Promise’, didn’t explode like we were kind of hoping it would. It did better than any other song we’ve ever had before and better than any other Century Media radio single, so all those factors, you know, making it so we are we just have to write better songs and do a better album than that one. Maybe that will be the one that will catch on for us.
Toddstar: Right, well you hit on something that I really found & I like the fact that “Star-Crossed” went back to “Beautiful Tragedy” as far as the whole sound whereas the middle album, “The Dream” kind of was Pink Floyd-ish to me, not that it wasn’t still heavy, it had where you did the whole story. Do you think that drew away from that album or do you think going back to the harder sound maybe didn’t propel this album the way you wanted it to?
Chris Howorth: It’s hard to say, you know, hindsight is always 20/20. I think “The Dream” did better than “Beautiful Tragedy”, you know, overall as far as when it came out it was better on the charts. I mean we definitely just went with our gut and wrote songs that we wanted to write and weren’t thinking “Oh, this has to be a certain way for our fans or this has to be a certain way ‘cuz this is what people expect.” We just did what we wanted to do. With the new album, we definitely had a lot of time to reflect on how it worked out with “The Dream” and the touring cycle. We are kind of thinking are going to be able to cross-over more and do some alternative stuff to hopefully widen our fan base, which we did reach a lot of new people that normally wouldn’t listen to us with “The Dream.”
We definitely wanted to focus in on who we really were with the new album and what our sound was. We’re on a metal label, we have a metal manager, and our metal fans were the ones that we saw every day at Warped Tour – not the scene kids but the people who have bought all our first albums, saw us on Ozzfest, and were standing in the front the whole time, so we kind of realized that those are our people. The second album defines who were are and gives the people what they want a little bit more at the same time, while not sacrificing any of our artistic goals or anything but I think now that we’ve done “Star-crossed” were going to definitely make sure the fourth album continues on it that, it’s going to be an In This Moment album. We’re not going to go another left turn and do any reggae album, it going to definitely be the next step from “A Star Crossed Wasteland.”
Toddstar: As a fan, that’s good to know, because I really love what you guys have done with the new album. Moving on that point a little bit, you guys have such a rare sound, because you get so many of the artists who have, who are female fronted – Evanescence who had a huge first album and a second album tanked – now where are they? Lacuna Coil have always been there and been big, but for whatever reason, they’ve never really hit the mark or the market and they definitely don’t tour or do the things that you guys do. But the live sound that you guys have is so unique. Have you guys thought about putting any of that to audio or video, or doing a release live or something?
Chris Howorth: I mean were always talking about it. Live albums are not what the used to be and we can’t do a live album as our 4th one, it’s kind of like one of those things that like it would be cool, but it’s definitely not anything on the forefront. Obviously we’d like to do a live DVD sometime and have really good audio and video to capture the whole thing. It’s not something that we are really thinking about.
Toddstar: Ok, I only mentioned it because again as a fan, I think you guys are visually appealing live, just all the interaction and play between the band members, I mean, it’s really, it’s rare to find. Let’s talk about the tours for a minute. You mentioned one that just, that seemed like, to use your term, “a left turn” for me. I’ve seen you on Ozzfest; I’ve seen you on Mayhem. I’ve got tickets to see you guys here in Battle Creek, MI, on the Music as a Weapon tour. But, Vans Warped – how did that come about? That is kind of a different crowd then the whole Ozzfest or Mayhem crowd.
Chris Howorth: It came about basically we done Ozzfest, the new album, “The Dream” was a little bit wider than what everyone was expecting from us. We saw that the songs were really strong, songs that could cross over other people that don’t like just screaming and metal all the time. Warped tour just seemed like the great place to showcase that and get us exposed to a new audience – to help cross us over to people who have never heard of us before and you know, we still wanted Warped tour really bad that year. We had already done Ozzfest and I don’t think Mayhem we had that year but it wasn’t really in the forefront. We were just “what can we do – we just did Ozzfest.” We want to do Warped. It was definitely a left turn from Mayhem and Ozzfest for us. Now looking at it, it was definitely not our crowd. It was you know – every day was a struggle. We weren’t on a really good stage, we had a really small stage that was we kind of weren’t able to really put on the show that we do, given the stage that we were on. It just wasn’t our people, our people were there so it definitely fun. I know we made some new fans but we defiantly would see the crown and think “Wow, look at all these people from Ozzfest and this crazy looking metal dude right here with all these scene kids around him.” You know, they’re coming out ‘cuz they love us from our past from Ozzfest and you know supporting us thru all this, you know, so it didn’t really matter that Warped wasn’t maybe the best. It crossed off another experience for us that reached more people.
Toddstar: Oh cool. Let’s bring it to 2011. Music As A Weapon tour – this is huge bill. A couple of the bands from different tours that you guys have road before but this is a cool package to have Disturbed, Korn, you guys & Sevendust all lumped together. Is this something you guys kind of strove for or did it fall into your lap?
Chris Howorth: It fell in our lap; I mean we were trying to find a great tour for after Mayhem, you know, we ended up doing the Nonpoint tour. To keep the ball rolling, we were just trying to reach out for any options we could and we’ve been with Monster a long time. Monster sponsored Music As A Weapon this year. It just kind of worked out that we were able to pull some strings to get us in. When we got the news we were on the bill, it was just, you know, a big moment for us. We needed something like this and it’s not like at the time this is the perfect tour, the perfect audience, and then turns out that 95% of these shows the audiences are just eating it up. They love that we’re playing all new stuff & most of them have never heard of us before and love all the new stuff. It’s going over great so it’s just really the perfect tour at the perfect time for In This Moment.
Toddstar: Awesome. That’s good to know. Let’s talk about idols. Who made you want to pick up a guitar?
Chris Howorth: Ace Frehley.
Toddstar: Really?
Chris Howorth: Ace Frehley and all the 80’s players, you know. Ratt – Warren DeMartini; George Lynch; Ozzys players – Zack and Jake E. Lee; Eddie Van Halen – all those guys are my meaning for it besides Dimebag Darrell.
Toddstar: Ok, you answered that part of the question then. A couple more quick ones, then I’ll let you get back to your day. Gaming – I understand, based on your Facebook posts, you like gaming, live gaming.
Chris Howorth: I’ve always loved playing games, you know, from having Atari to Nintendo, to now I have an X-Box. I’ve played games on my PC when I had a PC all the years back. Actually, stopping gaming on the PC helped me get this off the ground. With gaming, I was just wasting a lot of time, when I stopped doing that I was able to focus more on the band and get the band going and stuff like that. When we did the album like “Star-crossed,” I didn’t play x-box for six months. But being on tour there is a lot of down time during the day, I’m not a big party animal like at night. I don’t drink so, the x-box is always sitting there and you know, we just play the heck out of it. I played it hard, I’m actually getting the last couple weeks of gaming out of my system right now because were starting on the new album and I’m going to be working on music like a job every day, I won’t have a lot of time for gaming after that. I do love it.
Toddstar: Well since your starting to work on music, it is a nice segue way into one of my last questions, I like to know what song thru the history of time, and if that’s too specific, even if you grab an album. What song or album thru the history of time do you wish you could say had your name in the credits somewhere, whether it was a song or an album you wrote, produced, played on, you were sitting in the room when they recorded it? There is just one thing that grabbed you.
Chris Howorth: What album do I wish that I could say that I was a part of?
Toddstar: Yeah
Chris Howorth: Any band?
Toddstar: Any band
Chris Howorth: I would probably say, ahh, that’s a tough one man, um, because there are so many. The Black Album from Metallica, or Vulgar Display of Power from Pantera, one of those few maybe.
Toddstar: Those are 2 great choices. Well last question & I’ll let you off the hook, not so easy though. To Chris Howorth, what is the meaning of life?
Chris Howorth: The meaning of life is not money or anything like that its just trying to appreciate the good things when they happen and savor the moment that you’re in, you know, when something good happens cuz it’s all about ups & downs, you can appreciate those good moments and hold on to those when there are the bad moments. That’s it to me, that’s life, just trying to appreciate the good moments and appreciate the things that you have and then try not to focus on the bad things.
Toddstar: Doesn’t get any simpler or more honest than that Chris. Well listen man, again, I’ll let you get back to your day. I really appreciate you taking time out for the Rockpit.
Chris Howorth: Alright buddy. Good talking to you man & send me the links & I’ll make sure to get them up on Facebook & stuff.
Toddstar: Awesome, thanks brother.
Chris Howorth: Alright dude. Thanks a lot man.
