In This Moment
Album: A Star-Crossed Wasteland
Release Date: July 13, 2010
Label: Century Media

Track Listing
01. The Gun Show
02. Just Drive
03. The Promise (featuring Adrian Patrick of Otherwise)
04. Standing Alone
05. A Star-Crossed Wasteland
06. Blazin
07. The Road
08. Iron Army
09. The Last Cowboy
10. World in Flames

Reviewer: Eric

When In This Moment started, at least come onto the scene, they were a normal metalcore act with a female lead singer. Not too long after their first release (Beautiful Tragedy) the band released The Dream. It was a different take on the bands current stance but now we have A Star-Crossed Wasteland, an album that fucking sucks!

The first single, which I hope gets dropped ASAP, is The Gun Show. Talk about terrible opening tracks, this song is a mix of a dog in a blender and a grown man taking a shit next to the control panel. It is so bad on the ears, I thought at first I was a witness to Maria Brink’s dying. Brink does this god awful screams and at the same time she is trying to relive the magic The Dream had, the bands most successful album as of now. Trying to mix two types of vocals is fine in a song or an entire album, but trying to mix them at once, for a song like The Gun Show…I think the metal community deserves an apologue.

After being the witness to that murder I was glad to know that I was not really a witness, Maria was still alive and Just Drive was driving right through my ears. This should have been the opening track and guess what it should have been the first fucking single off this album. It is a track that blends both old and new, but not at the same time like that vomit inducing The Gun Show track.

The rest of the album is more of the same bull shit since all good things can’t last too long. Adrian Patrick of Otherwise makes an appearance on a track that is ruined by Maria Brink’s screaming and the band, all of those so-called talented guys I gave credit to on The Dream; seem to make A Star-Crossed Wasteland smell like rancid tuna in a can.

Jeff Fabb gets the biggest wave of the finger from me. His drumming has hit an all time low. At times Fabb is trying to be the best drummer possible but it sounds like somebody hit play on a drum machine and tried to mimic that sound…it sucks. Then there are blast beats after blast beats that don’t even go well with the song! Did somebody go into the studio before recording started and put each of the members of In This Moment in different rooms? “Maria you are in there…Kyle go stand in the corner for now…and you, you, and you take those rooms at the end of the hallway. No Blake you can’t share a room, take your own.”

One huge difference on this record is the fact the backup vocals from Chris Howorth, Blake Bunzel, and Kyle Konkiel (sorry Fabb) can actually be heard. Not only can they be heard their voices sometimes make things better since Maria is just on this new acid trip. Must have been after her little Q&A in Playboy awhile ago.

Final Verdict
This has got to be the worst release from In This Moment. What the fuck happened? The Dream was a good album that made the band stand out and then they repay us with this shit? Come on guys and gal, this is the sort of album that will confuse your fans and not help advance record sales. Go back a few years and find out why your career started moving forward a lot faster than most bands in the genre.

Rating
5.25 out of 10

In This Moment Official Web Site
In This Moment on Myspace