Maria Brink was bitten by the music bug at an early age. “My mama loved music,” she says, recalling her first gig when she was just five years old. “We’d be out on the lawn seats, and I got to see Stevie Nicks.”
Since then, she has become one of the most vivid and intriguing figures in our scene, not to mention one of its most distinctive voices. Since co-founding In This Moment in LA in 2005, she’s overseen their steady climb through modern metal’s ranks as they’ve shifted away from the melodic metalcore of their early days to a bigger, more polished blend of pop, goth and industrial. The band eventually scored a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance in 2021, while their live shows have become eye-popping, conceptual spectacles.
“I wanted to have these dark, gothic creature performers onstage with me,” she says. “The metal community doesn’t do that. I wanted to bring something unique.”
She’s also a survivor. From experiencing abuse and trauma in her childhood to moving to LA alone as a young mum “to be a rock star”, her road to the top has been anything but easy.
“My life taught me how to alchemise my pain into being a warrior,” she tells us, as we talk via Zoom ahead of the release of In This Moment’s ninth album, Witch. “I’m street smart, I’m savvy. I’m a fighter; you can’t pull one over me easy.”
Was there a moment in your life where you realised that you could sing?
“I was singing as a little girl. When I was seven years old, I lived in this cute little trailer park, and I would put on little productions with all the kids in our trailer park. We would invite all the parents, and we’d steal roses and flowers from people’s gardens and give each parent that showed up a little flower.”
What was your upbringing like?
“I grew up in the projects, motel rooms and trailers, we didn’t have a lot of money. My mom did wind up suffering from some bad addictions, and then my sister’s father was an abusive, bad man. It was a hard upbringing. Thank God I always had the gentle spirit and love from my mother, which kept me afloat through everything.”
How has that impacted you as a person?
“I wouldn’t change anything for the world. My mom was addicted to crack for a while, and I think it taught me to be afraid of drugs. Addiction runs really thick in my family. I might have wound up being an addict. I’ve only smoked weed. I’ve never tried any other drug ever. Sometimes I think when I’m an old lady, maybe I’ll try mushrooms to connect to the Earth and tap into the forest… even though I swear I feel that now without the mushrooms.”
Your dad left early in your life. How did that affect you?
“He was a good man with a good heart. He just wasn’t necessarily meant to be a father. As a child, it was hard on me, but in my teenage years it hit me hard. At the beginning of my musical career, I wrote about it a lot. He came into my life for a little while, and we got close when I was around 16, 17. But then he moved away to the Philippines. Even though it came with pain, I don’t regret my dad being my father, and we had a healing moment when he died a few years ago.
I FaceTimed with him; it was the first time I had seen my dad’s face in over 26 years. I was FaceTiming with him when he actually passed away, and even when he couldn’t speak to me, I was telling him that I loved him, that I forgive him, and that the memories I have of him are only beautiful. I’m really grateful that we had that ending.”
You grew up in Albany, New York and discovered heavy music on the local hardcore scene. What are your memories of that?
“My mom loved Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Iron Maiden, so I had my first influences with my mom, but I remember going to my first hardcore shows in a little club in upstate New York called QE2. Hatebreed would come up, and Earth Crisis, and I remember I felt at home. There was a sense of danger and of belonging in there. That’s the first time I realised I wanted to go into music. I was 15 or 16.”
You had your son, Davion, when you were 15. What were the challenges there?
“It was hard being a teenage mom. I left school and got my apartment, a little studio, [in New York] right away when I turned 16, and we lived together alone. But I don’t know what kind of path maybe I would have fallen into if it wasn’t for my son. My son gave me hope. He gave me purpose in life. I was a kid when I had him; I was just doing the best that I could, but love was always there, and was the number one thing that kept us afloat.”
Did you worry that dream of being a singer might not happen because of your new reality?
“I didn’t. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; I’ve had it since I was a kid, but I didn’t get diagnosed until I was almost 30. I set my mind on something, and I’m gonna make it happen. I’m pretty tenacious in that way.”
You moved to LA aged 25. Was that scary?
“I was scared all the time. I didn’t know anybody; just me and my boy. There are millions of people in the City of Dreams trying to make their dreams come true, and you’re one little, baby soul, trying to stick out. We didn’t live in the best neighbourhoods, and we had people try to break into our houses. I worked in the bar scene, and I was barely able to pay the rent, take care of my son, and get babysitters. The whole thing was a rollercoaster. I have a lot of guilt for bringing my son to California and pulling him away from all his friends to pursue my dream. He had to sacrifice a lot for my career.”
What do you remember about meeting Chris [Howorth, lead guitarist] and co-founding In This Moment?
“On Sundays, all these musicians would go to Chris’s house and have jam sessions, and I got invited. Not one woman there. I’m the only woman. Everyone’s practising, and I was like, ‘Hey, can I, like, show you guys something?’ I was terrified. I did this talking thing that started going into this like scrappy, rappy, singing and then screaming really loud. But nobody’s playing any music. I’m just standing there like crazy person doing this, trying to show who I am.”
How hard was it to keep the balance between being in a band and being a parent?
“I had my own apartment for a long time in Cali, then I wound up moving in with Chris, and Davion had his own room there. It made finances a lot easier. [Davion’s] life consisted of living with a bunch of bandmembers and we practised right in the house. I didn’t officially start touring until he was almost a teenager, and then my mom helped me, because in the beginning, it wasn’t like he could just come with me. We were in a van, and he was still in school.
"One thing that I’ve always had in this band is gentlemen around me, respectable men. I was very protective over my son and had healthy boundaries, not just around my son, but for our fans. I was like, ‘There’s not going to be any Mötley Crüe moments in here where you guys are banging young girls in the back’, and we didn’t allow hardcore drugs around. Because of the way I grew up, I didn’t want my son around anything like that.”
At the start of your career, you performed at open mic nights at the famed rock star hangout Rainbow Bar & Grill on LA’s Sunset Strip. What are your memories of that?
“I mean, that was scary too. I barely knew how to play the keyboard, but I slowly started meeting people. We became friends with Dino [Cazares, guitarist] from Fear Factory, he saw a light in us. And Lemmy sat next to me, drinking a beer. I just said, ‘Hi’, I didn’t make it weird or anything. I always tried to keep my cool, and eventually started realising they’re just people just like us.”
With your fourth album, 2012’s Blood, the band started presenting yourselves more theatrically. What was behind that change?
“We really found ourselves on the Blood album. Almost all of our bandmembers quit, our managers dropped us, and Chris and I were like, ‘Is the band over?’ At that point, it was like we were born again, and there was going to be no rules. I told Chris I was going to get a wireless mic and that I wanted to get performers, and he was like, ‘This isn’t Britney Spears. What are you talking about?’ No one in the metal world had dancers and performers onstage with them, but when he saw the performing arts, and it was dark, and it was creepy, and it was this theatrical moment that wasn’t contrived or cheesy, he saw the vision.”
Did you have that vision all along but weren’t sure how to implement it, or did you not feel comfortable? What gave you the confidence to go with it at that moment?
“I had dreams, but we were at the beginning of our band, and it was a certain way and a certain thing. I don’t think In This Moment would have wound up being who we are if our band didn’t fall apart at that moment.”
What influenced your personal stage style at that time?
“Did you ever see The Cell [2000 sci-fi movie starring Jennifer Lopez]? The imagery was so amazing to me. I love that she was wearing posture collars, and I always loved Alexander McQueen and high fashion; structured, shiny and gothic. I always loved latex and spikes. I help create the wardrobes and choreography for the live show, and it keeps me feeling alive and excited to create.”
You did your first solo performance in 2020, at ShipRocked festival.What are your memories of that?
“I have so many bells and whistles around me; performers and lights, pyro and [smoke plumes stage effect] cryo, wardrobe and masks. So, it was very different and unique for me to sit there alone. When I just play my piano and do something very intimate and very quiet, I feel a real connection to something deeper than myself.”
The new ITM album is titled Witch. What does that word mean to you?
“My whole house looks like a jungle. Crystals and sage, and little spells, and there’s witch brooms hanging on the walls, but not in a creepy way. I truly believe in the power of manifesting your destiny. I came from nothing, and have alchemised my pain into things I’ve manifested in life. My spells are my music.
I was also told, at a young age, by a pretty renowned psychic in California that I was burned in my last life as a witch. If you look into my eyes, I have a ring of orange around my iris. It’s why I was born as a fire sign. I always felt like I was a witch.”
What are your hobbies outside the band?
“I like to do arts and crafts and create wreaths. I like painting and making my house feel like literally a giant shrine; it brings me joy to create. I have a piano in my room. I love good restaurants and good food.”
There are two sides to your art: energy, love, the universe, and darkness, blood and violence. How do the two coexist?
“I think most people have a balance inside them of darkness and light. I have suffered from a crazy life, abuse and trauma, and there’s darkness in there, that’s why I have this beautiful outlet, which is our band. I have that light in me because I expel and release the darkness through my music, through my art. I still have it in me; I still have bad anxiety, suffer really bad, but I can live with it and have learned how to put it into my music.”
It seems like you’ve lived your life fearlessly, but do you have any fears for the future?
“I’m an empath. If somebody I love hurts, I hurt. Or if I see animals in pain on social media or I see suffering, it consumes me. It’ll make me sick. So I have to disconnect myself from the world. I’m really strong and powerful, but I also have to protect my energy to be strong. I’ve shared my energy so much, with so many people around the world, my fears have become more about protecting my own energy, my own circle, my own little world.”
Are you happy with how big In This Moment are, or do you want more?
“We still would love to keep expanding our art, and we would love to keep growing, but we are also trying to embrace who we are in the space that we hold within this industry, and be proud of that. I think we’ve lost a lot of beautiful moments instead of embracing the beauty of where we are; we’re always striving to get to that next level. And personally, I am focused on finding peace within myself, trying to overcome mental stress and fears or pain. I would love to just be in a place where anxiety doesn’t have a grip on me, and I could just fucking float around, like Yoda, in a space of peace."
Witch is out now via Better Noise Music.
