For the second time in three albums, the CD Odyssey has provided some heavy metal with a female lead singer. Cool!
Disc 1749 is…A Star-Crossed Wasteland
Artist: In This Moment
Year of Release: 2010
What’s up with the Cover? Even after the apocalypse there is still an opportunity for beauty. Sure the city in the background is destroyed and the conditions of those tracks suggests the trains are no longer running on time (or at all).
Despite that you can still get around by horse (if you can catch one) and with nuclear winter finally ending some sunlight has pushed through and caused that lovely tree to bloom. Ah…the apocalypse; so peaceful, so restful.
How I Came To Know It: My coworker Gerad has a niece that is a fan, and so I heard about In This Moment from her, through him (I’ve never met her). This was just me digging into their back catalogue after thoroughly enjoying 2012’s “Blood” (reviewed back at Disc 1684).
How It Stacks Up: I have four In This Moment albums. “A Star-Crossed Wasteland” is #3.
Rating: 3 stars
There’s a lot of screaming. That’s the first thing to know about In This Moment. It is very viscerally powerful, invigorating, empowering screaming, but it is screaming nonetheless.
That In This Moment lead singer Maria Brink can scream this loud and make it musical is the essence of her diabolical talent. Like a stadium full of fans cheering on their favourite team, In This Moment takes animalistic emotion and converts it to an anthem that lifts you up.
I know we’re into the third paragraph of the narrative at this point, so if you haven’t picked up on this being heavy metal please be formally warned at this time. This is heavy metal, and it isn’t your grandmother’s heavy metal (you know, Cream). This is modern metal, with thump and crunch to spare.
I am a long-time metal fan, but there are times when A Star-Crossed Wasteland was a bit too much for me. They have no reservations about throwing in multiple layers of sound and the result can be a very dense production that would usually put me off. There were times where it did put me off, but for the most part I just surrendered to the primal power of it all. I couldn’t sing along (frankly, how Brink’s vocal chords aren’t shredded bloody ribbons is a minor miracle) but I loved letting the experience wash over me.
The record starts with a bang (metaphorically and literally) with “The Gun Show”. Brink welcomes us to the gun show, but it isn’t some dude flexing his muscles. It could be about sex, and it could be about some Western-inspired post-apocalyptic confrontation, or it could be both. I think it is both. I just know when Brink welcomes you to the gun show, you are glad you…er…came.
The other star on this album is Jeff Fabb on drums. Fabb is fabulous, with a sharp snap to his playing that can turn into furiously precise rhythmic attacks at any moment. There are plenty of great moments, but I was particularly partial to his work on “Standing Alone” which has an eclectic mix of “hey, a marching band!” and “double-bass assault!”.
The album isn’t perfect. On “The Promise” we have Brink duetting with guest vocalist Adrian Patrick of the band “Otherwise”. I don’t know that band but listening to him struggle to keep up with Brink’s power made me decide to feel otherwise about checking him out further.
There are also times when Brink’s snarl is so close to insanity that the lyrics are hard to pick up, but here it is more of a feature than a bug. She’s so damned energized the words are secondary to the emotion they are transmitting – mostly a whole lot of aggression, passion and some of that classic Wendy O. Williams “It’s my life, and I’ll do what I like” kind of F off vibe.
The record ends with “World in Flames,” a power ballad that is at odds with all the scream and furor that precedes it. However, it is just the right palate cleanser to end with. Lest you think Brink is a one trick pony as a vocalist, on “World in Flames” she shows she is perfectly capable of holding big notes, and belting out a melody that feels the feels. A lot of the songs that precede this one are about burning it all down, but here Brink says she’ll stick with her partner even if everything burns around them. It’s positively romantic, and a reminder that all this time she wasn’t screaming at you, she was screaming with you.
Best tracks: The Gun Show, Standing Alone, A Star-Crossed Wasteland, Blazin’, World of Flames
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