During Whore, Maria Brink appeared onstage in a huge headdress bearing the word “WHORE,” sat on a raised platform that looked like both a throne and a cage, while masked dancers moved around her. This was no longer an ordinary metal concert. It was more like a mixture of cabaret, horror, religious ritual, and a fashion show where someone had accidentally turned the guitar amplifiers all the way up.
That was how In This Moment looked after 2012. But it all began much more modestly—with no cages, elaborate sets, or several trucks of stage equipment.
Maria Brink and guitarist Chris Howorth met in Los Angeles in 2005. Howorth was auditioning vocalists for a new project and initially doubted whether a female voice would suit heavy material. Brink quickly settled that question. Together, they formed the band Dying Star, which was joined by drummer Jeff Fabb.
The first months were accompanied by the usual confusion of beginning musicians: bassists changed, members combined rehearsals with jobs, and songs were distributed online. After one of the early musicians left, the band changed its name to In This Moment. Guitarist Blake Bunzel and bassist Jesse Landry joined the stable lineup.
The band built an audience before releasing a full-length album—through MySpace, independent touring, and demos. In the mid-2000s, this was becoming a genuine alternative to waiting for a label employee in a half-empty club. Their activity attracted Century Media Records, which offered the musicians an international deal.
The debut album Beautiful Tragedy was released on March 20, 2007. The record was made under the direction of producer Eric Rachel, who had worked with Atreyu and The Black Dahlia Murder. At the time, In This Moment played melodic metalcore: fast guitar parts, double-bass drumming, sharp breakdowns, and transitions from clean vocals to screams.
Brink’s lyrics drew on personal experience—feelings of abandonment, difficult relationships, and the need to raise her son on her own. The title track and Prayers made the vocalist a noticeable figure in a scene where women were still often treated as a promotional detail. She answered without diplomacy: she screamed louder than many of her colleagues and did not try to fit the image of a polished “girl in a metal band.”
In This Moment performed at Ozzfest and toured with Megadeth, Lacuna Coil, Rob Zombie, and Ozzy Osbourne. The debut did not enter the Billboard 200, but reached No. 35 on the Independent Albums chart. For a new quintet, that was enough to move directly on to the next recording.
The second album, The Dream, appeared in September 2008. Kevin Churko, known for his work with Ozzy Osbourne, served as producer. He brought the melodies and Brink’s clean vocals to the foreground, reducing the amount of screaming. The change irritated fans of the harder debut, but the record climbed to No. 73 on the Billboard 200.
On Forever and Call Me—a cover of the Blondie hit—the band already sounded closer to alternative metal and heavy radio rock. The next release, 2010’s A Star-Crossed Wasteland, partially brought back the aggression and reached No. 40 on the Billboard 200. Behind the outward growth, however, exhaustion and disagreements were building.
In 2011, Jeff Fabb and Blake Bunzel left the lineup and began working with American Idol contestant James Durbin. Jesse Landry had departed even earlier; Travis Johnson took over on bass. Later, In This Moment added guitarist Randy Weitzel and drummer Tom Hane.
For Brink and Howorth, the mass departure looked like a reason to shut down the project. Instead, they dismantled it almost to its foundations. Out of the crisis came not another version of their old metalcore, but an entirely different In This Moment—slower, heavier, sexier, and far more theatrical.
The fourth album, Blood, was recorded with Kevin Churko and released in August 2012. Guitar breakdowns now stood alongside industrial electronics, spoken-word passages, and rhythms designed for large venues. The title track, Adrenalize, and Whore dramatically expanded the band’s audience.
Blood debuted at No. 15 on the Billboard 200 and later received a gold certification in the United States. The title single went platinum. The numbers mattered, but the main change was the show. Brink created the stage persona of “Mother Maria,” introduced the Blood Girls dancers, frequent costume changes, masks, and separate sets for individual songs.
The tour became more expensive and technically complex. While other frontmen could walk up to the microphone in the same T-shirt they had worn to soundcheck, In This Moment transported screens, platforms, costumes, and props. Sometimes changing outfits took longer than a guitar solo. The audience did not object.
Before recording their fifth album, the musicians moved from Century Media to Atlantic Records. Black Widow, produced by Kevin Churko, was released in November 2014 and reached No. 8 on the Billboard 200—the best result in the band’s history.
Sick Like Me, Big Bad Wolf, and Sex Metal Barbie continued combining alternative metal with electronics and provocative visual presentation. The title of the last song was a response to internet comments about Brink’s appearance. Instead of trying to defend herself, the vocalist turned the insults into lyrics and made a stage number out of them.
Despite all its spectacle, Black Widow was overloaded: interludes, dialogues, and programmatic statements occasionally got in the way of the songs. But the commercial logic worked. In This Moment no longer depended on the mid-2000s metalcore trend and occupied their own niche between a heavy concert and a staged theatrical production.
During work on Ritual, drummer Tom Hane was replaced by Kent Diimmel. The album was released in July 2017 and debuted at No. 23 on the Billboard 200. Its sound became darker, while the lyrics introduced motifs of religion, witchcraft, and liberation from imposed rules.
The song Black Wedding played with Billy Idol’s White Wedding. Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford was invited to the recording, where he performed the role of a kind of priest. The same album also featured a heavy version of Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight. It was a risky decision: the original depends on the anticipation of its famous drum entrance, while In This Moment surrounded it with guitars and a Gothic haze.
The seventh album, Mother, appeared on March 27, 2020—almost simultaneously with the shutdown of the concert industry because of the pandemic. The record reached No. 34 on the Billboard 200, but the full touring cycle had to be postponed.
Lizzy Hale of Halestorm and Taylor Momsen of The Pretty Reckless took part in the recording of the Queen cover We Will Rock You. More important for the band’s career was the song The In-Between, which earned In This Moment their first Grammy nomination in the Best Metal Performance category. They did not win, but the band once regarded as a striking decoration on festival posters had reached the most prestigious American music award.
The eighth album, Godmode, was released on October 27, 2023, through BMG. For the first time since the debut, the main producer was not Kevin Churko: the work was led by his son Kane Churko, while some of the material was created with composer Tyler Bates. The record was made at Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas.
The tracklist included The Purge, the title track Godmode, the collaboration with Spencer Charnas of Ice Nine Kills, Damaged, and an industrial version of Björk’s Army of Me. The song I Would Die for You had previously appeared in the film John Wick: Chapter 4. The sound became harsher, but the musicians did not abandon electronics or theatrical scale.
In July 2025, In This Moment released Heretic with Australian artist Kim Dracula. In the spring of 2026, Sleeping with the Enemy followed, and then came Crawl. These songs appeared on the ninth album, Witch, whose release through Better Noise Music is scheduled for August 28, 2026.
The announced tracklist also includes a collaboration with Dayseeker and a cover of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall featuring Kat Von D. The main lineup remains stable: Maria Brink, Chris Howorth, Randy Weitzel, Travis Johnson, and Kent Diimmel. Two decades after meeting at an audition, Brink and Howorth are preparing their ninth album—and by now, one microphone and a couple of spotlights will clearly not be enough to present it.
