I did the underground scene growing up. I lived in Albany, New York so I'd go see Stigmata, Hatebreed, Murphy's Law so I was in that whole scene.

I guess the men who are meant to be a part of my life won't be intimidated by me and will be stronger. There's a specific breed that won't be afraid.

I really try to find inspiration in all band's I've toured with because everyone's up there doing their own thing and captivating in different forms.

When you write music that you are very passionate about, being able to bring the visual aspect of it alive with the music is what ties everything together.

My first tattoo was for my son, just a little infinity symbol. Because every time we go apart, we stay together in infinity, so it's a tiny infinity symbol.

Instead of yelling and screaming or losing myself all the time, I release everything in my music, and that's kind of how I expel my demons, as you would say.

We had a demo recorded that we made available on our MySpace site, and that was quite successful for us too, but not on the same level as 'Beautiful Tragedy.'

We all have these dreams of everything we want to do and accomplish. It's happening for us. We're living it - doing these concerts, magazines, traveling the world.

I don't think we're metalcore. To me, metalcore is more like hardcore-influenced metal, with lots of breakdowns. I think we're a lot more diverse sounding than that.

We are normally involved in Ozzfest and heavier tours. We love all the tours we've done, but I always thought it'd be cool to do Warped, since a lot of these kids are young girls.

I get it from everything - anything that's theatrical, watching the other bands, looking up Vegas shows online... anything that can just inspire me. I'm always searching for inspiration.

I've said it before: just being a pretty face ain't going to get you that far. It has to be about whatever the art behind it is and what the message is and what the music is, the purpose.

I know I am more on the sexual side in terms of my appearance, which is something that the metal world is not used to. But I am comfortable with it. It's how I express my art, and myself.

Like, even in our stage performance, it's vulnerable at certain times, it's sad, it's raging... It's not just about being a sex symbol, or being sexy to appease everyone. I'm not about that.

You could be the sexiest woman in the world, and if you can't sing, if you're not an artist and you can't create a show, you can't have power in front of a crowd, you're gonna crash and burn.

The core of everything always has to be the music. If someone's in the dark and can't see what we look like, you still want that music to make them feel like something and make them have that connection.

Black Widow' is a metaphor for this innocent young girl who gets infected with life, traumas, experiences, and the balance of light and darkness. She becomes this poised and powerful creature. That's the album.

Well, I have definitely had a very intense life and upbringing to say the least. I did have a beautiful young mom who loved me as much as she could but I still had to deal with all forms of abuse and hardships.

I wear like lip gloss and my hair is always really natural, and I'm a really kind of natural free spirit in my everyday life who has crystals and I burn sage, and I think I find a lot of calming beauty in that stuff.

You know, there's so many great bands out there, visual bands, that we have to do something that makes us individual, and makes us stick out from everybody else, and something that is even bigger than just the music.

What kids out there who are getting bullied need to know is that it's not OK. There's a lot of reach-out programs, people that you can talk to, people that can help you figure out how to get an answer to the problem.

My Maria on stage definitely is a real natural part of who I am, but obviously I can't walk around as that girl. You know what I mean? It's definitely an alter ego, but it is part of who I am, it is who I am, it is my life.

World In Flames' is pretty powerful to me, it's about waking up in the middle of the night, the whole world has ignited into flames, and I'm there alone. And it's kind of like a fear of dying alone and the whole world is burning.

Black Widow' is definitely the darker part of me. This album is about finding the weakness inside and turning it into strength. It's about being reborn, setting yourself free and realizing the balance in everything - the dark and the light.

We didn't want it to end up in discussions where we would talk about whether this song needed to be more metal, whether I needed to scream more in that song or whether I shouldn't sing quite as much in those songs because metalheads wouldn't like that.

We always wanted to have this big show. So we just kind of started doing little things, like building our own little props, and starting to put on a show. And we just started seeing the response, and it felt amazing to us, and then I fell in love with it.

People think that once a band is 'big' that they make a ton of money, but that's not true. It's hard to make money. It's financially a hard business until you hit gold. However, that only makes you strive toward your goal more and work harder because of it.

We got to play Madison Square Garden before. I mean, that was like a dream. There is something about the lights and the huge arenas that is really special, but nothing can quite compare to those intimate shows where it's sold out, and it's a thousand people.

It can't just be about being sexy. It has to have all the emotions involved, I think, on the album and in the live show. Because if you do all sex, you lose all of the other beautiful things that should be a part of it... And just being sexy will get you nowhere.

Everyone has their own right to their own point of view and everyone has their own perception of everything and everyone doesn't have to love me, obviously, but I just think that it's too much when people say that they want you to die and it can be so dark and mean.

I don't know what genre you would put us into, and I'm always telling people that. When I'm trying to explain In This Moment's sound to them, all I can say is that its diverse-sounding, with influences such as metalcore's breakdowns, metal in general and some melodic rock.

Embrace who you are, and if people don't understand you, that's their own problem, that's their own insecurities. They're really the one with the problem - the people who are judging you and saying negative things to you, they are really the people with the problem, not you at all.

I struggled with kind of fighting with the inner illnesses within myself where my psychological madness and I have always kind of struggled with different disorders and mental things and so the biggest thing that I was kind of always ashamed of or being embarrassed of was kind of that.

I think that all of the deep, intense things, a lot of different abuse, and all kinds of crazy stuff - I think it made me really strong and it made me learn how to appreciate every day, appreciate people in my life, so it's just another good example of sometimes bad things make us appreciate the beautiful every day.

Mystery is great, that's what art is and I think when you can leave your imagination to grow, it's good. I just don't like it if it's super bad because I'm a loving person, I love everybody and human beings. I do have a darkness to me, but I would never do bad things or wish bad things on people, or hurt anything or anyone.

I am such a fiery woman and I am a real passionate woman and I get so much stuff built up inside of me that I can release all that on stage, and I kind of counterbalance it with the normal Maria that I am because with the real calming, natural kind of earthy spirit stuff and it kind of balances me out so I don't go too crazy.

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