Chris Checks In From The Road - What's Next For ITM?

As I write this update we are 11 days away from the end of Warped Tour 2009 - I am in a hotel room in Boise, ID on one of our last days off for the tour. We went into Warped Tour thinking we knew what to expect (we've done 2 Ozzfest's and numerous other festivals) but we quickly realized that Warped Tour is a completely different animal. For starters it’s bigger than any other traveling festival out there - we are talking 600 plus people traveling with the tour, over 60 buses, 30 vans, RVs, semi trucks, cars etc etc….all traveling together and setting up and tearing down every day – it’s a huge production! Attendance has been insane, every show packed with all kinds of people from metal heads to punk rockers to emo kids and everything in between. It’s a huge mix of people from all walks of life. Most of them are kids under 18, it has been an amazing opportunity for us to reach a brand new audience that have never heard of us before (Thanks Kevin Lyman). We started the tour thinking its an alternative music fest and we have lots of new songs that aren't just metal that would probably appeal to the "Warped Tour audience" and yet again we came to realize we had no idea what the "Warped Tour audience" was. These kids want to move, crowd surf and mosh just like any metal crowd so we adjusted the set list and pulled out heavy songs we haven't played since touring with Megadeth in 2007. With so many bands playing the festival and so much stuff going on every day you really have to hustle to get people to stop and watch your band, so throughout the tour we are constantly brain storming to come up with new ideas for the show and ways to get people to take notice. One of the best things we came up with was to go out into the crowd on the last song and try and get a circle pit going around us, and even better than that....an all girl circle pit...turns out Warped Tour is the perfect place to get a huge all girl circle pit going.....and I gotta say its a pretty cool feeling to stand in the middle of a bunch of girls who are circle pitting around you...Check out this video from our Denver show last week.




We still have 7 more Warped shows on the West Coast so any girls who wanna mosh come to a show!

Another really cool thing we were reminded of at Warped Tour was how amazing the In This Moment fans are. At every city we played this summer we were greeted by our fans at every show singing along and standing in the front row making us feel welcome, thank you for buying our merch and supporting us. We have real fans that will come see us no matter what we are doing or who we are playing with...You guys are the best!...That being said, we are currently planning something really special for our fans this fall! (announcement coming soon).

One last little tidbit of info...we are using the next 2 months following Warped Tour to start writing music for our next album, we will record the album at the beginning of the year for a summer 2010 release. As a band we've been discussing what we want for the sound of the new album and the general consensus is we are all feeling a heavier and darker vibe for this one (that makes me happy)......stay tuned!

Chris Howorth (In This Moment)