In This Moment is a band that’s not afraid to embark upon experimental stylistic voyages. To date, they’ve released four albums, and each has featured a distinct musical approach. Their first album burst upon the scene solidly within the genre of metalcore, a mix of metal and hardcore punk that features frequent screamed vocals. In This Moment’s second album dropped the majority of the screaming, emphasizing melodic elements instead. Their third album retained the melody of the second but added more aggression and melded clean vocals with screamed ones, and the fourth took a completely different turn, venturing into the realm of industrial metal.
The Dream is In This Moment’s second album and my favorite.
Similar to melodic death metal, metalcore turns off many a listener due to the vocal styling (ie. the screaming). Personally, I can only handle so much of it myself. On In This Moment’s first album, Beautiful Tragedy, lead singer Maria Brink only hinted at her vocal potential, choosing to spend most of her time rending the air with sharp shrieks rather than testing her ability to serenade.
Thankfully, on The Dream, Maria challenged herself vocally to focus on harmonization over screaming, and the results are fantastic. Brink’s vocals are simultaneously soaring and soulful, and they complement the musical aggression of the album, which evokes elements of melodic metal mixed with 80’s hard rock, perfectly.
In addition, the album’s lyrics deal with some interesting themes, such as the battle between dreams and reality. It’s also quite plain that the band was inspired by Alice in Wonderland, a novel I’ve already expressed great admiration for, as everything from the first song, titled ‘The Rabbit Hole’, to the presence of a white rabbit on the album cover to lead singer Maria Brink’s distinctive blue garb in live performances during tour oozes influence from the classic Lewis Carroll tale.
Virtually every track on the album is solid, including the above single ‘Forever’, but I’m also particularly fond of the tracks ‘Lost at Sea’ and ‘Mechanical Love’. If you can get your hands on the Ultra Violet edition of the album, you can also listen to a pretty fun rendition of Blondie’s ‘Call Me’, which further shows the influence 80’s rock imbued upon the record.
As I’ve mentioned, the band has recently taken a pretty dramatic turn from the musical style they exhibited on this album. Though part of me wishes they had retained their melodic, harmony heavy sound in their most recent release, without stylistic evolution, they wouldn’t have released this album at all. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed this album, and I highly recommend it.
Image credit: By Century Media/In This Moment [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.