In This Moment: Mother Earth

IN THIS MOMENT have always been a ground-shaking band, whether that be in their efforts pushing back at scene that rejected female-led bands in its earlier years, or in their bold and outrageous aesthetics through their 2012 Blood-era that embraced femininity and sexuality. Their latest offering sets course for another unconventional approach, exploring spirituality and femininity that sets the typically male-oriented religious language in a female gaze.

Mother marks the bands follow up from their 2017 Ritual-era, borrowing that tribalistic and spiritual aspects of this album. Said to be their heaviest release since 2012’s Blood, the building anticipation from fans was high following their string of tours with HALESTORM and NEW YEARS DAY that kept audiences lustful for more. Speaking of the new album, the meaning behind Mother and the fun collaborations along the way including a track with Lzzy Hale and Taylor Momsen is guitarist Chris Howorth.

The album’s premise is the idea of a mother figure, with links to spirituality and religion weaving their way throughout the lyrics and general language of the album. Howorth says that the inspiration behind the name actually came from the fans. “A lot of fans are always calling Maria ‘mom’ and ‘mother’ online and then Maria is a single mom, she raised her son as a single mom and she was also raised by her mom who was a single mom.”
Howorth explained that Brink has a deep relationship with spirituality that’s found itself in the band, “the whole symbolism of Mother Earth and mother Maria in religious terms, all that kind of made the idea of calling the album Mother a really interesting topic for us. So as far as the overall religious tone IN THIS MOMENT kind of have it’s more of like an open-ended thing. Maria‘s very spiritual, she likes God and she not trying to claim she can tell you what God is but she knows it’s real.”

One of the album’s shining moments is its powerhouse collaborations. The band has already premiered their work with Joe Cotela of DED on Hunting Grounds, but one of the many iconic moments on the album that is sure to become a fan-favourite is the trio collaboration between Maria Brink, Lzzy Hale of HALESTORM and Taylor Momsen of THE PRETTY RECKLESS.

“They were both awesome, their performances were super duper epic,” Howorth says in the appraisal of the two, he explains that the collaboration came from a simple text and he didn’t expect it to pull through. “It’s kind of a cool story, we had just done all these tours with HALESTORM and there was this feeling of female power resurgence, Me Too movement stuff going on so that’s kind of there in the background. We’ve done cover songs on our albums in the past, Maria always bring up the most iconic songs to cover, like Phil Collins‘ In The Air Tonight on the last album and I was concerned about that because it’s such an iconic song, huge boots to fill. We Will Rock You was, even more, I was like ‘are you kidding me, no way.’ The QUEEN movie had just become the biggest movie and I was like ‘we can’t do that song’ so she was like ‘okay, what if we had Lzzy Hale and Taylor Momsen and me singing on it’ and I said ‘okay that would definitely be really cool but good luck! because there’s no way you could get them to do that.’ Then she like texted them and they both said yes, she presented it as ‘I think it would be totally kickass if the three of us came together, three powerhouses, and just made this thing.'”

Howorth suggested that a music video between the three would be of interest. “I mean I’ve heard murmurings about it!” He jokes. “Getting them all to do the song would be the same thing as getting them all to do the video so it could happen, I don’t know though.”

Though it seems almost easy to troupe them as a female-fronted band, the California five-piece talents’ extend beyond gender, but it’s undeniable that they’ve seen and experienced their own handful of sexism for being led by a female vocalist. In fact, Brink shared to Loudwire in 2018, “I don’t feel like I was held back by being a woman at all, I think almost I felt more rare and powerful in my particular scene of music, but there were incidents like Ozzfest I remember there were 300 people at the same time chanting show us your tits.”

Now, Howorth stresses the importance of women being represented in music. “I think it’s really important and I think it’s naturally happening because I’ve been a music fan since I was a teenager and following all the metal scenes and there have always been females in there but very very limited amounts of them. In this day and age, it seems in the rock world especially, there’s definitely a lot more. It is still harder for them to get played on the radio, harder on festivals and things like that. It’s way more skewered towards men, but it is what it is. I think you just gotta fight for your chance and people like Maria, Lzzy, Ash, Taylor and Amy Lee they’re freaking kicking ass out there and I think everyone is paying attention now.”

The tracks on this album are so creative and fun, like the pounding drums at the start of The Beginning or what sounds to be a baby’s heartbeat at the start of Born in Flames, what was the process of making that fit into the Mother theme?

Chris Howorth: Well, we kind of went in, we always kind of have a loose feeling or theme. Mother was the title we were trying to shoot for. Maria was really feeling this tribal vibe, like Vikings and stuff. We were really excited about using different instruments and stuff, we used something weird on the song Lay Me Down. We used as an old horsehair Viking instrument, we were just trying to have all this different stuff. We kind of wanted to give a feeling like you’re in a ceremony throughout the album and songs. But we never really have a ‘we have to do this or have to do this’ we go in just kind of how we’re feeling.

I also really liked the interlude with The Red Crusade and The In-between, was there any reason for having that specifically before In-between?

Chris: Yeah, Maria put that prelude/interlude there because she wanted to have the right intensity and build up before The In-between came in. It was her idea to call it The Red Crusade and all that, she was very very adamant about that being in there.

Speaking of The In-between, I know you guys released a music video for that song and it’s so visually stimulating. I wondered if you could tell us what the process of making that was, and behind the scenes info?

Chris: All of our videos, the last five videos we’ve done, Maria has been the director or co-director of those videos. She basically comes up with the artistic vision of different scenes that she wants to present and they’re usually like you see, with the hands and the head. She had that idea like she wanted these hands to be coming out of the blackness and be around her face and like the arms and all these different things she wanted to try to string them together in a way that makes sense with the song to create the emotions that go with it. To me, I think this video, compared to some of our other ones, really nails it. She got the vibe of what the song was trying to say along with the artistic side of it and the same thing the video like it is with the song Maria‘s planning it out in advance but a lot of the time we get into the situation where we’re actually shooting the video and they’re working out dance moves, hand movements and we’re coming up with shots on the fly as we’re doing it.

Speaking about the album, this album is the follow up from your Ritual series. Are the two linked in any way? 

Chris: They’re not really linked in any kind of tangible way, other than the progression of the music, the artwork, the look and the style that was a natural move. Whereas we did Blood and we had the way we looked, then we shifted into the Black Widow territory with Sex Metal Barbie and Maria had the whole different look. Then when we went into Rituals we had this more pagan, stripped-down, a little bit more natural and Maria really felt good with that. I think we transitioned into Mother still holding on to that same ritualistic feeling and look and vibe with the songs.

Mother is out now via Atlantic Records.

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