AN OPEN LETTER TO IN THIS MOMENT
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 4:49pm by Axl Rosenberg
Dear Maria Brink and the Other Anonymous Dudes from In This Moment,
First of all, I think we all got off on the wrong foot and I’d like to apologize. I know I’ve said some not very nice things about certain members of your band in the past, things that were completely superficial and in no way related to your music. And my own feelings about your physical appearance aside, I hear that you’re actually very nice people. So I hope we can leave the past in the past and just live in this moment.
(Sorry. I couldn’t resist).
Last week you released a free mp3 on your MySpace page of several of your members, including Ms. Brink, performing a cover of Pantera’s “I’m Broken” with the nice men from Talking Metal. Mostly I thought your version of the song served as a nice illustration of why Phil Anselmo was, in his heyday, one of the best screamers in all of metal. I mean, I guess musically you sounded okay enough – your guitar player is no Dimebag, but then, who is? – but really, I didn’t like Maria’s vocals. At all.
But I chose to keep my mouth shut, because, well, some perfectly respectable people thought Maria acquitted herself quite admirably.
But now you’ve posted another cover of a classic metal song on your MySpace page for free download – this time, a version of Slayer’s “Postmortem.” And, once again, your take on the song serves as little more than a reminder of what made the original so great.
In fact, the very first thing I noticed about the song was the fact that your drummer is no Dave Lombardo. The second thing I noticed was that scream-whisper thing Maria is doing. Now, Tom Araya was never a very good singer, but still, I’d like to take this opportunity to ask Maria to please cut it out.
I’m serious. Cut it out already.
I guess what I’m saying is, maybe all these covers are really exciting for your fourteen year old fans who have no recollection whatsoever of the originals, and if your “reinterpretation” of these classics inspire some kid to go buy a copy of Far Beyond Driven or Reign in Blood, than, um, I guess that’s all good.
But mostly, I just want to ask you to stop doing covers. Please just stick to making your own shitty music. It looks like you’ll have a new album out in the fall. That should leave you plenty of your own crap to make sound terrible.
Warm regards,
W. Axl Rosenberg Co-Founder/Co-Editor-in-Chief, MetalSucks
P.S. Seriously though, cut it out already.
Personally, I didn’t get to hear it as… well… it’s a fucking MySpace page. Therefore it’s shit, difficult to read, scrolls down a million miles, has an annoying background graphic that obscures the text, uses a gazillion different fucking Javascript widgets, requires me to log in to download something for free and converts all the standard headings to French (based on the location of my IP address) with no option to switch it to a language I understand better.
Webspace is free everywhere. Spend half an hour setting up your own page somewhere so it doesn’t look like crap. This isn’t a rant at ITM. It’s at every wanker with a MySpace page. Fucking MySpace. It’s set the internet back to the late 90’s when nobody had a fucking clue how to lay out a web page. bastard fucking thing.
Aaaaaaand breathe. And go and listen to the new Testament album again.
yes, I agree….cut this shit out…… I didn’t get a chance to hear the pantera rip off… but this shits gotta stop at some point…… if ya can’t write a decent new song then maybe you should stop or do a different style of music, one where it is acceptable to rip one’s music off when you can’t do something original, I think they call it ‘SAMPLING’…… that should suit you better….
Sounds like a reasonable request, as long as you throw A7X into the mix and their godawful “Walk” cover they vomited out on the Ozzfest stage two years ago, while standing in front of their Overkill batskull ripoff logo and wearing their “Appettite for Destruction”-era silk scarves. ;)
And who the hell you callin’ “respectable”?
good post Axl. you echoed my sentiments.
If I remember correctly, ITM’s cover of Postmortem was actually done quite a while back when the band was still getting on their feet. I thought it was a pretty decent cover.
For the most part I really enjoy ITM, this coming from a guy who generally isn’t into metalcore.
This is definitely not sacrilege, my friend. I’ve heard worse covers from the likes of Anthrax doing Cowboy Song (Thin Lizzy), Entombed – “God of Thunder?’, Judas Priest – “Johnny B. Goode?”, Between The Buried And Me – “Geek USA” (Smashing Pumpkins). These all suck. Even Maiden has some suck ass covers out there. If you asked, all these prick bands would probably say they love the bands. Hence the covers. As for In This Moment, they don’t suck, but they ain’t good.
In This Moment sucks and the singer is most definitely not attractive. At all.
I said it back then, and I’ll say it again, Maria Brink, I’d hit it. With a vengance.
Anywho.
I’ve heard worse, ’sides, covers from extremely awesome bands are usually so ambitious that even if the band covering them is very talented they still have way too much to live up to and usually end up failing miserably.
[...] Reason #232354 why MetalSucks rules, in an open letter to In This Moment: “Please just stick to making your own shitty music. It looks like you’ll have a new album out in the fall. That should leave you plenty of your own [...]
These covers are absolutely terrible.
…wait…are you really belittling her vocal attempts in comparison to the vocal style of mr. Tom Araya? Come on guys…My 10 year old nephew sounds more vicious than Tom.
This isn’t a horrible cover, instrumentally, they did a pretty decent job. Im sure Pro Tools helped a lot…but still…if the attempt to limit people covering their influences is what you are aiming for…thats just simply lame.
I didn’t hear the Pantera cover. Does anyone have that handy?
Btw, does it do any justice to you for the utter fact they didn’t cover a Slayer song that a hundred other bands have covered?
there used to be this respect thing where you, as a bandmember, wouldn’t go out and slaughter a band’s song. you have to earn the right to do a cover. you can’t just be some dickless band (not literally, ITM lady) and take marketing shortcuts by covering some classics. fuck off with this bullshit.
I don’t know if you have noticed in the last few years or so…there is no respect in the music world anymore…a majority of bands out there now are the same regurgitated bands of the last twenty years.
@deadspout Says: April 17th, 2008 at 9:57 am
There are about 5 million Latino-Slayer kids in LA who just sharpened up their blades for disparaging the good name of Tom Araya’s vocal abilities, sir. :)
Back OT; when are inferior bands going to realize that you don’t cover classic tunes you take ones that were kinda ‘off’ but might have had potential and rip the shit out of those?
Also, a lot of ‘lead’ guitarists nowadays really eat donkey cock. They know 3 arpeggio shapes and sweep as fast as possible thinking that is what qualifies as competent shredding.
If you can’t rip the shit out of much less competently handle aping Dime’s (or anyone elses solos) don’t cover the song. That is one of my biggest pet peeves about bands covering Randy Rhoads era Ozzy tunes. C’mon.
[...] than a year ago I took it upon myself to tell the members of In This Moment that they really, seriously, no fucking around, needed to [...]
Dude maria is a chick and a pretty good metal singer at that. Yeah shes no Phil but i thought the version was pretty good for a cover. I actually thought her harmony moments brought a new element to the song and made it a little more her and not just her trying to copy Phil. There is nothing wrong with their music and now that youve stated your opinion more than once on how you feel STFU already. they sell plenty of albums and don’t need you as a fan. If you don’t like the covers stay the fuck off of their myspace page. Or better yet go and try to sing it better yourself and post that up on youtube.
Ok,
Ur all ripping ITM for what?Because they attempted to make a cover of previous bands?Well i dont see many of you getting of your ass and trying to make shyt sound better.Also ur forgeting shes a female its not going to sound like the original or anything so get that thought out ur head.Its a cover for a reason its “There” take on the song how they thought it should sound like.So stop ripping on people who do covers…Btw slayer also has done shyty covers so why are you not talking all this about other bands why single out just one?
As for ITM i like there music…And to add to this post how much do you make?oh wait u waste ur time on this site so must not be much…while ITM make big money and have there own songs…So go back to ur basement and put on the old ass slayer albums and wack off to watever makes u feel humble be they make money and ur at home makeing nothing compared to them or maybe get off ur ass and make a band and do what they have..Music now days has changed stop bringing up the “Old” days if u dont like it dont listen matter fact dont even post
Hello all of you at metal sucks (no, your site does not deserve to be capitalized). How are you doing? I’d just like to say that after reading your dumbass post on In this Moment and the metal genre in general, that you all are in fact, dumbasses. Your wanabe, half-assed sophisticated sense of humor towards metal is equivalent to the shart juice that a now have in my pants from reading this post. The book of optimism makes the world go around and you all should take a page out of it. And I don’t even know WHAT you were thinking about saying something negative about Maria’s physical appearance, but she is fine as hell. So fine that I was actually looking for a picture of her to put on my myspace when I ran into this piece-of-shit website (which I will check on every once in a while to bash the fuck out of you pathetic swine).
Their guitarist is good.
Their drummer is great.
And they’re a hell of a performance live, at least when I saw them, but I’m sure you were just speaking from your dumbassness.
Hope to be seeing you later :)
Cheerio.
There is nothing good, let alone great, about this band. Least of all Maria’s appearance (I think the term you used was “pathetic swine”. Oh wait, that was in reference to something else?). I’m looking forward to your return visits, where you can further demonstrate not only your expert command of the term “dumbass”, but also your imagined sense of intellect and musical taste.
Haha. Imagined sense of intellect. I like that. I did bash on your guys’ opinions about In This Moment and the whole metal genre, so I guess I deserved that. But we’re both in the wrong I think, because music is about feeling and having your own opinion. Optimism. I guess it’s just about being open minded. So when I say that someone needs to take that book of optimism I was talking about and smack you upside the head with it, don’t take it too personal. Just use it.
And yes, come to think of it I WAS using “pathetic swine” in reference to something else. Your dumbass! pahaha.
For a long time, I wasn’t going to comment on this article, but I came across my mixes of it the other day while backing up some hard drives and figured I’d finally give my two cents:
First off, I’m a huge fan of the site, and this article made me laugh. Secondly, I’m the guy who recorded, mixed, and played bass on this sacrilege (at least according to some of you) of a cover. So here’s the real back story…
My name’s Josh. I used to be the bassist in In This Moment way back in 2005; I think I technically count as the original bassist. At the time this cover was recorded (2005), we were unsigned and still just playing around LA. Mediaskare Records was putting together a Slayer tribute album, and they asked us to contribute a song.
I work(ed) at a recording studio so I managed to get a few free days of studio time, and we tracked the song. Now, I read the “I’m sure Pro Tools helped a lot” comment, and that’s what made me want to defend this song. Everything on that song was performed. The drums were not sound-replaced or edited to be exactly on the beat (if only some of you knew the studio cheats that get used on the albums you’re listening to). Jeff may not be Dave Lombardo, but he’s one of the best drummers I’ve ever played with. There are no drum samples, etc. That’s all him really playing.
There is no Pro Tools editing on the any of the guitars or bass. We did takes and punches to make sure it was tight, but there was no editing work in post to clean anything up. I don’t know how many of these “You butchered Slayer!” comments are coming from people who actually play, but Slayer’s not the easiest band to cover. Let’s see you guys do better.
As for Maria’s vocals. Again, no cheats; that’s all her. I realize a lot of people don’t like her vocals, but whatever. I thought the ideas we came up with made for a pretty interesting take on it. And yeah, she’s no Tom Araya so we didn’t try to match his vocals exactly. We let her do it her way. The point of the album was to do Slayer covers in the bands’ involved style, not replicate the originals exactly. We all changed parts a little bit.
We were towards the end of mixing it when we found out the album had been cancelled. The version that got posted is actually one of the rough mixes I had sent to everyone while I was working on it. We never finished the mix completely. A few years later, when the band decided to posting it on their page, they were nice enough to first ask me if I was okay with the unfinished version being posted.
Granted, ITM’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Hell, I’m not in the band anymore because I decided it wasn’t the type of music I wanted to play for a living. To be honest, I always said we started out as a Killswitch Engage-ish band with a female singer. I’m sure some people will get offended by that analogy, but that was my take.
Anyway, end of the day, if you were an up-and-coming local band who was offered the chance to do a track on a tribute album to one of your favorite bands, you would do it, wouldn’t you? Maybe you can’t tell based on ITM’s original music, but we all were/are big Slayer fans, and it was something we were excited to do. We weren’t paid a cent to do it, and there was no big-name producer attached. We did it ourselves because we thought it would be good exposure and we liked the song.
You may not like it (or any of ITM’s music), but there’s certainly no need slag the band members, their playing abilities, or Maria’s looks. I mean, c’mon, it could be worse. At least it’s not a crabcore/screamo version of “Post Mortem,” right?
Again, huge fan of the site, and this article is really fucking funny, but some of the feedback’s a bit excessive. Just thought I’d take up for my friends/myself. Keep up the good work!