In This Moment released Godmode on October 27, 2023, through BMG. Their eighth studio album took shape during an unusually long stretch of writing, giving vocalist Maria Brink and guitarist Chris Howorth time to experiment without immediately having to turn every idea into a finished record. The sessions at Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas paired that freedom with producers Kane Churko and Tyler Bates.
For Howorth, the difference began with the calendar. Speaking with WRIF’s Meltdown in an interview transcribed by Blabbermouth, he explained that the band had several years to develop material instead of returning from tour with roughly three months to prepare another album. He said the pressure of those earlier deadlines could leave him creatively disengaged. This time, he and Brink found themselves responding enthusiastically to each other’s ideas, with fewer disagreements over where the music should go.
“The Purge” grew directly out of that exchange. Howorth sent Brink musical ideas during lockdown, and she identified one as a future lead single well before its release. The frustration of being unable to work, alongside the division and unrest unfolding around them, eventually found its way into her performance. When the song arrived in July 2023, Brink described its underlying message as finding balance and avoiding getting pulled too deeply into a destructive spiral. Jensen Noen directed the accompanying music video, extending the song into the elaborate visual world she had developed around the band.
The title track offered another example of how easily the two founders were communicating. “I can literally send him a voicemail and he sends it back to me in music form,” Brink said in BMG’s announcement. She also pointed out that she had not screamed through an entire verse in some time. That vocal approach became part of the release she was seeking, giving the song’s sense of power a physical outlet.
The studio work opened up more possibilities. Kane took the production role previously held across much of the band’s catalog by his father, Kevin Churko. Howorth experimented with different tunings and an eight string guitar, which he said the band had not used on an album before. Brink was also interested in parts that moved against one another rhythmically before locking together. Those choices gave the musicians specific ways to pursue the heavier, more experimental material they were describing.
Their cover of Björk’s “Army of Me” came from a much older attachment. Brink had been a fan since her teenage years and admired the Icelandic artist’s imagination and creative independence. She played Howorth three possible songs before they settled on this one. The choice placed one of Brink’s formative inspirations directly inside the record, alongside the music she and Howorth had been developing together.
“Damaged” explored a more vulnerable subject through a guest appearance from Ice Nine Kills singer Spencer Charnas. Brink said she had wanted to work with him for some time. In discussing the song, she connected its lyrics to trauma, feelings of unworthiness and the fear that being alone might spare somebody else from having to deal with those struggles. For her, the exchange between the two singers represented someone understanding that pain and choosing to face it alongside her.
The album closed with “I Would Die for You,” a song that reached listeners through the soundtrack to John Wick: Chapter 4. Brink and Howorth had first written with Bates on the track in 2021, before continuing to develop material without a fixed album deadline. That initial collaboration eventually became the final song on Godmode, connecting the record’s earliest writing to its closing moments.
