In This Moment: Witch Album Review

Review: Jack Price

Two decades of careful cultivating, creating and concocting boundary breaking music and performances is an incredible feat by any band. And with the landscape of heavy music constantly changing and adjusting, it’s easy for legacy artists to get lost in the woods. However, seeing the forest for the trees exposes the true greats, and no other name is more synoptic with revolutionary than In This Moment. Even more so, frontwoman Maria Brink.

The California mainstays are back with their ninth (yes, ninth!) studio album, Witch, a look into Brink’s cathartic manifestation of reality and the creation within. It encapsulates both personal trials and self-worth, with Maria delivering a haunting, yet ethereal, vocal performance, backed by genre-blurring musical composition by the rest of the band. Opening with Shame, the ritualistic, otherworldly ambience eases the audience as Brink whispers “I am not ashamed, you should be ashamed, shame on you” like a coven’s spell before releasing her iconic banshee howls that both terrify and entrance. The grinding guitars by Chris Howorth and Randy Weitzel add to the aggressive possession of the track, backed by a thundering rampage of percussion from Kent Diimmel and bass by Travis Johnson, creating an atmospheric start to the record.

Proving while In This Moment may have been on the field for 20 plus years, they can still keep up with the younger crowd, as Dayseeker joins them in the second act for I Want 2 Believe, an operatic confession of loss and disillusionment while fighting to persevere through. Brink’s epic, charging monologue fleshes the slower track out nicely and fits perfectly in place of a breakdown.

Crawl, the third single released in preparation for the album, is infused with enough industrial tones to make Trent Reznor jealous. It’s edgy, aggressive, sexy and brutal, lyrically accusatory and the layered vocals imply the overtone of the whole album – duality, alchemy of inner pain and ostracism to power and strength – all packaged in a spine-wrenching, onslaught of perfection that In This Moment does best.

Through The Dark offers Maria’s sickly sweet, tempting soft vocals, again layered in a dreamlike arrangement, carrying the audience transcendently through a haze of ambience towards the disorientating climax of the track. The track is complimented by the following single, Sleeping With The Enemy, which almost feels like a more aggressive sequel to the aforementioned track, which creates a perfect middle section to the record.

In a bold move by the band, three of the eleven tracks on Witch are covers, including Wrapped Around Your Finger by The Police (a truly haunting, beautiful rendition), an industrial, EDM infused Another Brick In The Wall by Pink Floyd (featuring Kat Von D of all people?) that is almost more remix than cover that could easily feature in some 50 Shades-esk film trailer, and a very ambient Something I Can Never Have by Nine Inch Nails that closes out the album in only a way that a NIN X ITM track could – silvery, soft whispers mixed with whips of programming and piano, strings and hollow, deep bass that booms and crescendos towards the climax of the track, Brink’s velvety, breathy vocals leading to wailing cries before trailing off again.

Witch has so many moments that I could play over and over again and is perfectly on brand for In This Moment. You could take their entire repertoire of material and shuffle it like a deck of cards and arrange them randomly into albums and every song would still fit perfectly. It’s incredible that a band that pushes the envelope and confines of genre so bravely yet stays consistent with their own identity in delivering good music. It’s Brink’s iconic voice and lyrical prowess that continues to drive In This Moment as the powerhouse they are known to be. Witch is a perfect example of don’t fix what ain’t broke.