Review Summary: Maria Brink shows us how well she can sing, yell, and scream over chugging guitar chords, as well as whisper over soft electronics...and that's about it...
Please keep in mind this is my first review, and it's a first impressions review at that, although chances of me revisiting this album are little to none.
In This Moment is actually one of my favorite female vocal led metal bands. The first song that I heard by this band was "Forever" and it's intricate guitar work, great beat (bass and drums) along with catchy and dynamic vocals by Maria Brink really made me look up this band and download their "The Dream" album, and I enjoyed about every song on that album.
Skipping their debut album and third brings me to "Blood", as this album seemed to have quite a lot of hype to it, with the bands single and whole album even appearing on my Xbox 360's music section's main attention square. But after hearing this albums lead same-named single "Blood", I was all but amazed...
My first thoughts upon hearing the single, as well as the whole album, is "What happened to their songwriting abilities?!" I mean, a verse where the first words in every phrase are "I hate you", followed by "I love you" in the following verse, and "blood, blood, blood" in the chorus? I'm not saying that repetition is a very bad thing, but with the theme of sex, violence, and blood (of course), how is that anything but generic? Brink tries her best to make this sound energetic, but the lack of backing instrumentals just makes this single fall flat on it's face for me, as well as most of the other songs.
The other 70% of the tracks in this album follow similar themes in the lyrics, with guitar chugs under Brinks ranges of screams, yells, and occasional singing. The opening track "Rise with Me", as well as "It is Written" and "Aries" are simply album fillers as I see them, with simple electronics under Brinks voice that don't ad any sort of build up to the following tracks. The song "Burn" ends with a droning guitar sound while "Scarlet"'s first half features acoustic guitar work, and a simple guitar solo in the second half, but that just can't save it from being a slow, boring acoustic/metal song. "From the Ashes" starts out making you think something different is gonna happen in this song, with an almost poppy-metal build-up intro, but then the chugging open chords pop out and all hope is lost. "Beast Within" is an alright track, with a guitar solo that isn't half bad. The next two tracks in this album follow the same suit as the first quarter of this album, their all forgettable. "11:11" is the "emotional closer" for the album, with Brink ooh-ing and aah-ing, preaching "at least I can see"...
At least her and the band behind her have laid down some great tracks in the past, but now, seeing is about the best thing she can seem to do now.
