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In This Moment: Beautiful Tragedy

There's an old saying that goes something like "don't judge a book by its cover", and it's very relevant here with the debut from California's In This Moment. Beautiful Trageday is the band's first full length release (Century Media Records), and a quick glimpse at the cover of the CD sees singer Maria Brink looking like a 2007 version of Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons, complete with frizzy hair, plenty of dollish makeup and long eyelashes. Not really what you would expect on a metal release, but once you pop this baby on your CD player, all bets are off and it turns into one hell of a listen.

Let's start with Maria-not only is this singer extremely attractive with her blonde hair, pretty face, and sexy body, but she can back it up with a multi-faceted vocal attack that combines soaring hard rock falsettos, brutal hardcore shouts, gentle ethereal moments, and gutteral death metal growls. Coupled with the intense guitar work from both Chris Howorth & Blake Bunzel, and the heavy rhythms courtesy of bassist Jesse Landry and drummer Jeff Fabb, In This Moment prove to be quite a formidable outfit. Relentless juggernauts like "Prayers", with its mix of gorgeous clean vocals and manic screams, and the title track, which features catchy melodies and plenty of thrash metal arrangements, show a band fully confident with their abilities. From there, it's one memorable piece after another, like the effective meeting of technical prog-metal and death metal savagery on "Ashes", atmospheric & progressive gothic rock on the keyboard drenched "Legacy of Odio", intricate melodic extreme metal along the lines of Arch Enemy or Bleeding Through on "Next Life", or the screaming metalcore frenzy of "Circles".

If you like massive guitar riffs, flashy solos, and plenty of clean and extreme female vocals, then Beautiful Tragedy will be a must purchase for you. Above all, this band has written a heaping amount of catchy & addicting melodic songs here that are decorated with all the right amount of metal and hard rock trappings. In This Moment's addition to Ozzfest 2007 should come as no surprise, and there's a very good chance they will impress in a big way.


Track Listing
1. Whispers of October
2. Prayers
3. Beautiful Tragedy
4. Ashes
5. Daddy's Falling Angel
6. Legacy of Odio
7. This Moment
8. Next Life
9. He Said Eternity
10. Circles
11. When the Storm Subsides

Added: April 20th 2007
Reviewer: Pete Pardo
Score:
Related Link: In This Moment My Space Page
Hits: 5203
Language: english

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In This Moment: Beautiful Tragedy
Posted by Ken Pierce, SoT Staff Writer on 2007-04-20 07:44:37
My Score:

To look at the CD cover from In This Moment, you might wonder if some weird Techno-Pop awaits you on the inside given the trippy, Raver girl cover photo of singer Maria Brink. What lies in wait on the inside however is a far different story and if you are a fan of the kind of stuff that bands like All That Remains and others who mix melody with bone-crushing Metal throttling then you are going to love this one. ITM's Beautiful Tragedy takes the working mechanics of Melodic Metalcore and strengthens them by really playing up to Brink's multiple vocal styles and ability and this works from the get go. "Beautiful Tragedy" is an incredible track and almost a righteous anthem that will have audiences singing along with fists raised high. There are a number of twists and turns where you don't expect them like when "The Legacy Of Odie" starts out and appears to be the ballad of the recording but before you know it the crunching begins of twin lead guitarists Chris Howorth and Blaze Bunzel. The pair definitely shred and you can tell they have a little bit of schooling from the Gothenburg greats of the recent past by some of the riffing that they do here. "Ashes" just pounds and we owe some of the appeal of this track due to the crushing rhythm section of Jesse Landry and Jeff Fabb (bass and drums respectively). While Landry needs to hold things in place for the group to run loose you can tell that Fabb has no restraints as he pummels the drums and delivers some fine double kick drum all around the recording. I liked the aspect of the band trying a number of different genre aspects from slow and subtle to intense and aggressive. After all the tensions had been let out, they chose to close with an acoustic number "When The Storm Subsides" – and I felt that this showed just how diverse they can be in this early stage of the game.

Founded in 2005 by Howorth and Brink and hailing from Southern California, ITM are an easy group to find yourself getting into. I also think that Maria shows the young and influential female singers who aspire to be onstage that the playing field is as open as you want it to be. She shows that beauty and being kick ass can be one in the same as she sings with incredible melody and then rips your head off with guttural screams and growls. Above it all, her pure and unbridled passion shines like the brightest beacon. I can safely say their Metal style works well in the live sense as I caught them as opener for Kittie some months ago and the level of performance delivery and intensity they gave had fans thinking the show was an ITM gig of their own. I think some incredible things are in store for this group. Find your own "Beautiful Tragedy" with In This Moment. You'll be happy that you did.




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