In This Moment Live at the Filmore

It’s been a while since I’ve looked forward to a show the way I have been for In This Moment. “Black Widow” is the best album of 2014. Not that anyone has been paying attention, but I’ve kind of been an advocate of In This Moment since “A Star-Crossed Wasteland.” That was sort of a landmark moment in my memory. The band’s label had sent me the album to review. Days later I was sitting across from Chris Howorth at a festival telling him that I thought the album was fantastic even though they were relatively unknown to me before that week. I told Maria Brink she was the female Corey Taylor. Even back then, they seemed destined for the mainstream.

Four years later, it’s been a whirlwind for the band that is now charting higher than ever with an album that is a little bit of a departure from their metalcore beginnings (but only a little). If it’s possible, they have upped their production values a notch…or by seven. I know. It’s just rock and roll. It is. But music, like most art, is the stuff that resonates most with our souls. In This Moment, at least for me, is the ultimate underdog story. In a genre still dominated by men, they are making strides in interesting and somewhat untapped directions. Ironically they are doing it with an album that, at least thematically, might be their most biographical as well. But if you want to know more about my thoughts on the album see the link here. On to the show:

The live show borrows many of its basic elements from the likes of Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson. In This Moment has taken these lessons to the next level of entertainment, as a friend coined the phrase, and what I’ll also call it “Industrial Cabaret.” If the show features Maria Brink in a variety of roles from Black Widow to Sex Metal Barbie – they are able to do things that neither Cooper nor Manson ever could – they are able to embrace frailty and sentimentality normally associated as being disadvantages for females and turn them into strengths. This brings me to something else that I noticed, though, that I found interesting. These points are exactly why their fans embrace them.

This isn’t just the Maria Brink show. They are a really good band. Maybe brilliantly understated, at times, but Chris Howorth and company are solid musicians who know what they are doing. If you haven’t seen them yet, you should. I will wager that it won’t be long, all things being equal, that they turn into the next Def Lepard or Bon Jovi. Then again if Chris and Maria have anything to say about it, maybe they won’t.