“There’s someone singing right by this door!” exclaims In This Moment’s Maria Brink, feigning alarm.

 

This reporter falls for it, turning to the dressing room entrance as if to confront an intruder. Brink is delighted. “I’m kidding,” she rasps, laughing soundlessly. “It’s just one of the other bands soundchecking.”

 

Practical joker probably isn’t one of the roles you’d automatically attribute to the 37-year-old singer, but then she’s someone that takes special pleasure in defying expectation. She talks about it at length. Once she screamed, stamped and flexed to satisfy a fury of expectation; now she’ll deliberately do the opposite.

 

In This Moment, and their frontwoman in particular, have provided one of the more intriguing rock stories of the last decade. Their rise, which took at least four albums (Maria thinks it’s five), is the type of thing that was commonplace in the 1970s but is virtually unknown in today’s instant-grat culture where artists can stand or fall on the strength of one song. It’s encouraging really – it’s how things should be.

 

Tonight we are meeting in Maria’s dressing room before the band’s gig at Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall. Tomorrow, In This Moment will conclude their first European headline tour with a show that sold out months ago at London’s century-old Koko. The Wulfrun gig stands out rather awkwardly as being the only stop that hasn’t done likewise.

 

Brink’s provocative stage persona is something that she leaves for showtime. Off duty she favours a retro bohemian look, the floaty, diaphanous gowns and wide-brimmed hats worn by the likes of Stevie Nicks and Yoko Ono in flower power days. Despite having only been in Wolverhampton for a few hours, she has already transformed the room into her own space. Purple throws adorn all of the seating, and something fragrant and relaxing is either burning or diffusing.

 

Other than that, she is as you would imagine – tall, elfin-featured, and smoky-eyed. Her handshake is gentle, but you are drawn to the word ‘believe’, tattooed prominently across her long fingers. You’re also drawn to the word ‘whore’, daubed in scarlet letters down the length of a conical hat, discarded for now on its side in the corner, but a sign of the transformation to come.

 

“This is more than I ever expected,” she says, reflecting on the tour. “Coming into this, I was kind of nervous because it’s been so long since we did anything in Europe, and the fact is I have no idea what’s been going on over here. We’re so grateful, and we’re already talking to our agents about coming back later this year.”

 

Tonight’s show is done by the book, but the following night in London is incendiary. The crowd screams and surges, and the band’s theatrical, almost vaudeville stage show seems custom built for the venerable, multi-tiered theatre.

 

“It’s surreal in a way,” she says, “because for so long we’ve just been trying to will these wonderful things to happen. We’ve been around for a long time, so for us to be at this point and suddenly have all the things we wanted suddenly starting to come to be – that’s crazy. These good things are taking place as a result of our fifth album, not our first or second, so it just goes to show that people should keep at their craft and not give up.”

 

Brink admits that In This Moment’s success is taking place “against the odds”. They’d always done enough to hook the interest, but they were never considered to be on a fast track to success. Debut ‘Beautiful Tragedy’ came out in 2007, feisty metalcore confined only by the limitations of the genre. Follow-up ‘The Dream’ could hardly have been more different, Maria showcasing for the first time a spine-tingling, multi-octave singing voice and a taste for the artful, in this case inspired by Lewis Carroll.

 

Both albums sold moderately well – but they divided fans. Sadly, and probably as a result, 2010’s ‘A Star-Crossed Wasteland’ looked like a compromise that came from somewhere other than the heart. In This Moment were in the midst of a serious identity crisis. It could have folded there and then, but instead Maria and guitarist Chris Howorth recruited three new members (six-stringer Randy Weitzel, bassist Travis Johnson and drummer Tom Hane) and virtually started afresh.

 

‘Blood’, released in 2012, turned the page with jagged guitars and big hooks, all undercut with flashes of industrial rock. The shows that accompanied it were intensely visual, a kind of theatre comparable to Rob Zombie, but quite unlike anything the band had attempted before. It was enough to see them leave longtime home Century Media for a major label deal with Atlantic. The release of ‘Black Widow’ late last year has driven the same ideas forward, developing both music and show. ‘Black Widow’ made the US Top 10, and is also the first album they’ve made that hasn’t veered violently away from the direction of its predecessor.

 

“I kept trying to put myself into boxes,” Maria says of the early years. “They were really other people’s boxes. I was trying to fulfil expectations and in that sense letting people have control over me. On ‘Blood’ and even more so on ‘Black Widow’, I just threw all that into the wind.

 

“I realised that the only way we were ever gonna be the band that was in my head was literally just to start doing it, right now. That’s when we started building our own props, making the sort of things that we envisaged but on a low down scale, doing it all ourselves, but at least working on making it happen. I just let myself go on the ‘Blood’ album. I felt that it was do or die.”

 

The singer admits to being “obsessively compulsive”, and that she’s already thinking big thoughts about the road ahead. Things like residencies in Las Vegas and the odd arena feature quite strongly, as does the oft-repeated idea of making audiences part of the show. “Really I just wanna be able to come down from the ceiling,” she laughs.

 

 

Needless to say, In This Moment’s transformation didn’t go down well with everyone. Ignoring the sweaty-palmed misogynists lurking behind username anonymity, Brink’s critics tend to fall into two camps. There’s the squadron of fans from the band’s metalcore beginnings who didn’t want things to change, and there are those who describe Maria as being “just a metal version of Lady Gaga or Kate Bush”. Of course, the odd word out here is ‘just’, as if there might be something reductive in being aligned with two of the most powerful and admired women in music.

 

“If I was still running around in little Alice In Wonderland dresses, headbanging and screaming at the crowd really hard, it wouldn’t be right,” she says, answering the first charge. “I used to think that being in a metal band meant I had to go out there, rush around and just scream at people, because that seemed to be what they wanted from me.

 

“I feel like I went from being a little girl to a woman. Before, I was to some degree controlled by the crowd, but now I’ve learned to get on top of it, and it’s really just through honesty. Metal and rock is supposed to be about not being contrived, so when I was going out simply trying to fulfil expectation, I wasn’t being myself. Then came that liberating moment, a feeling that this was my time. It was like being reborn.

 

“The truth lies in self-empowerment, and how comfortable and how powerful I feel. Now I find there’s a way I can go out and just stand there, with a certain presence, maybe not saying a word, and the crowd is louder than they’ve ever been before.”

 

Maria Brink was born in 1977 and grew up in New York State. She’s tended to describe her formative years with only the broadest of brushstrokes, but it seems safe to say that her childhood wasn’t the easiest.

 

Her father disappeared when she was still very young, and at some point she was abused. The sequence of events isn’t clear and doesn’t need to be, but Maria was left with a mother who was heavily addicted to drugs, and as a result of severe depression she drifted into ‘rebellious’ behaviour.

 

Pregnant at 15, she soon found herself living alone with son Davion, working in a launderette to pay the rent. As challenging as this must have been, having a baby to look after sharpened her focus, provided a reason to forge ahead. She firstly threw herself into helping her mother overcome her drugs habit. With that accomplished, and local band projects coming to nothing, in 2002 she made the big decision to drive 2,500 miles to Los Angeles.

 

The good news was that loads of bands in L.A. were looking for singers. The bad news was that you were ineligible if you happened to be a girl. For two years she worked in stores, and sang in coffee shops and bars, sustaining herself through dark times by having ‘believe’ and other empowering statements tattooed on her hands and arms. That way, they’d be there in front of her all the time, so she wouldn’t allow herself to forget.

 

Even her soon-to-be wingman Chris Howorth didn’t want her to audition. How she eventually changed his mind is one of those stories that’s so unlikely it’s probably true. In a fit of pique, she apparently burst into one of his band rehearsals, grabbed the mic and started singing. Rooted to the spot, the guitarist apologised and signed her up. That band, Dying Star, lasted only two gigs but formed the basis for the first incarnation of In This Moment.

 

The evil voice in Maria’s head, the voice of depression, continued to eat away at her, but she carried on fighting it. She’d already dreamed up the concept of what In This Moment would become.

 

“It was the kind of thing I dreamed of when I was a little girl,” she recalls. “It was fantasy stuff. Then you get involved in the business and the reality starts to hit you. We were having to pay to play, and we might be performing in little bars without anyone taking much notice.

I still had the dreams, even when we were totally broke, thinking that someday we’d have the things that were inside my head. We’d be in that place. For a long while I kept living with that sense of pretence – feeling that somehow, something would show up at the front door and mean that we could have it all.”

 

In the context of her story, the meaning of In This Moment’s songs do start to leap out from the page. ‘Big Bad Wolf’ is about your own inner demon, the self-doubt that’s more of a danger to you than the distant thing that put it there to start with. ‘Whore’ and ‘Sex Metal Barbie’ take derogatory assumptions and subvert them into something empowering, while the ‘mud’ being pumped into veins in the baleful ‘Blood’ is surely a reference to drug addiction.

 

“A lot of people thought that ‘Blood’ was about a man,” she says, with a sandpaper laugh. “It actually has nothing to do with relationships. All the songs are about personal experiences that I then adapt and put into different stories. Everyone has different perceptions depending on their own experiences, and I love the fact that someone might find something [in our music] that to them means something completely different to what it means to me. That’s the beauty of music, and of art in general.”

 

‘Black Widow’ has upped the ante, both at home and in Europe. The shows – which the British venues could barely accommodate – feature all band members daubed in war paint, with Maria dominating a variety of scenarios at stage centre. Some might dislike its inflexible, inch perfect choreography, but far more will bow to the thought, artistry and work that has gone into its desire to entertain. Not to mention the sheer balls of undertaking such a thing.

 

Accompanied by a pair of eerie, masked dancers, Brink looks about seven feet tall. The deliberate exception is ‘Into The Light’, a standalone ballad about bereavement, which she sings alone on a chair, curled almost into a ball. In London, as she reaches for the big sustained note at the song’s climax, applause spreads gently and consistently until it and the song’s conclusion become one.

 

It doesn’t sound exactly like the studio version, but for someone who has been on the road for months and whose voice must be under constant scrutiny, it’s impressive.

 

“I’ve seen some singers go through real challenges with their voice, but – knock on wood – it’s not been a struggle for me,” she says. “I’m lucky, I guess. I don’t even warm up beforehand. I’ll do some scales in the two minutes before, even just as I’m walking up to the stage.

 

“That note [in ‘Into The Light’]; I don’t worry about it. Some days I don’t hit it, but I can tell in advance if I’m going to be a bit off.

 

Sometimes that is the one thing you notice becoming different for me. It’s not the struggle between going from singing to screaming – that’s really easy – but when on the road for a few months I get a raspier voice so reaching those higher notes can be hard. If I get there and feel that I’m drifting a bit, I’ll turn it into something less pure, with more rasp.”

 

Maria appears to have a Zen-like, almost clinical sense of calm about her band’s destiny. That said, she’s tactile of manner and genuinely surprised by praise. She twice touches this reporter’s hand to emphasise various points, and is clearly moved when told that Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale last night described her and Taylor Momsen as being among the most powerful, forward-moving women in rock.

 

Hale is “so talented” and “such a beautiful doll”. “That means a lot because there are not tons of women in the metal and rock world, but there are definitely more of us coming through. I think it’s right that women should support each other.

 

Gathering her thoughts, she adds: “Actually, when it comes to music, for me it’s not about if it’s a woman or a guy, or even how the show looks. It’s mostly about how the music makes you feel, and the energy that surrounds it. It doesn’t matter to me if it comes from a man or a woman. A statement like “even in these chains you won’t break me” [from ‘Big Bad Wolf’] is for all of us. The ‘Black Widow’ album is about evoking different emotions in people, and the beauty of the show is in being able to visually bring that to life. Plus of course, it’s really fun!”

 

The band are currently shooting a promo video for ‘Sex Metal Barbie’ and considering ways to inject more spontaneity into their tightly controlled live performances. They’re talking about meshing a bunch of older songs together, playing them as a medley. They experimented with the idea in the US – the problem, Maria says, was that most fans didn’t really know the old stuff.

 

Deciding which songs to play from your back catalogue is a nice problem to have; much better than wondering if your van will make it to your next show outside L.A, or not knowing if you’ll get paid enough to eat properly. “The pain was worth it,” asserts Maria. “In This Moment is the strongest it has ever been, almost ten years into our career.”

 

Her story, and In This Moment’s, is ultimately one of triumph over adversity. Given the context, the unpromising page on which it was written, its colours are all the more vibrant and its outcome is all the sweeter. Where did it come from? “You need to believe,” she says – that word again. “And to work hard. In all areas of life, you need to not be afraid to grow, to do things differently. And to move on.”

 

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