In This Moment are playing the Ernie Ball Stage at this year's Vans Warped Tour.

Since its inception in 1995, Vans Warped Tour has been associated with punk music. Over the last few years, however, the sounds coming from the festival’s multiple stages have grown more diverse, including genres of the indie rock, hip hop and reggae persuasions.

And because out of punk have the metalcore and hardcore styles emerged, it only makes sense that bands like Underoath and Dillinger Escape Plan have showcased their talents with the festival in recent years.

The 15^th installment of the touring festival seems even more diverse, with even more metal-influenced music on the bill, and just one stage for fans to focus on.

For American melodic metalcore act In This Moment, this means greater exposure, and just an all-around better festival experience when not on or getting to the stage themselves.

“It’s awesome. There’s quite a bit of variety on the tour, there’s some country (Shooter Jennings), there’s that 3OH!3 band that does a lot rapping, then you have the Devil Wears Prada, which is a pretty heavy metalcore type band, and then there’s Black Tide and us, which are a little more in between the heavy and the light. There’s a wide range,” enthuses Chris Howorth, lead guitarist for the Los Angeles-based quintet, led by vocalist Maria Brink.

Rounded out by rhythm guitarist Blake Bunzel, drummer Jeff Fabb, and bassist Jesse Landry, In This Moment have been together for just four years, but have been fast gaining momentum as a must-hear group since Rob “Blasko” Nicholson first heard the group through MySpace and offered to manage them. For those who don’t know, Blasko is best known as the bassist for Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie’s solo projects, so he’s got a little cred.

Now, after all that savvy Internet marketing and tireless self-funded tours – and a deal with Century Media Records – In This Moment are veterans of not one, but two Ozzfests, and have two major label albums to their credit.

These American metalcore maestros have been touring steadily on the power of their second release The Dream [Century Media, 2008] and are ready to grow even more through the Vans Warped Tour.

“The shows have been great,” Howorth says. “It’s definitely one of the hardest things we’ve done, but the payoff at the show each day is definitely amazing, as is the camaraderie between all the bands, because everyone is suffering equally pretty much.”

In This Moment guitarist and founding member Chris Howorth.

It’s a combination of the heat, getting up at 7:30 in the morning and not knowing what’s going on, pushing gear really far away, taking it to the stage you’re playing, and everyone is doing the same thing every day. But it’s a really cool bonding experience: like summer camp. It all revolves around music and bands and awesome shows, so it’s great.

What was the band expecting Warped Tour to be like?

I think we were expecting more of an Ozzfest scenario where you pull up in the bus close to the stage where you’re playing, dump your gear out, you know where you’re going, you know what time you’re playing. The bus is parked as convenient as can be. With Warped Tour, there are probably 70 buses, and maybe 50 vans. It’s this huge, huge thing. You’re lucky if you get to park close. Unlike Ozzfest, if you’re parked in an inconvenient spot, they would lay out plywood to roll your gear on, where at Warped Tour, you’ve got to figure out when you’re playing, you’ve got figure out how to get your stuff there, and you’ve got to move it in. We don’t have a very big crew on this one either, so it’s definitely DIY on this one.

Is all that trouble worth it?

It’s cool, and it’s hard. But there’s this feeling; you can tell there’s a certain excitement around. The kids are out in force, and the shows are really good. Even though there is a tonne of stuff going on, our fans are finding us, new fans are finding us, and I think it’s the same for all the bands.

You play pretty early in the day, does that help or hurt the band at all?

The shows we’ve done so far have been great. We’ve had a mixture of our fans and a lot of new fans. I wasn’t expecting so many of our fans to show up, but we’re finding every day we play that we have fans waiting for us to play, which is really cool. There are a lot of new people too, who haven’t heard us before.

Do you prefer playing big tours like Warped and Ozzfest, or more one-off European style festivals?

I can speak for the whole band, and we all prefer getting on a tour and getting on a tour where you know what you’re doing, versus the one-offs where you’re renting gear, you’re flying into places, you don’t know what they’re going to have for you. It’s definitely better getting on a national tour where you can get a routine going.

Back in 2007, you were on the Hottest Chicks in Metal tour, which was the first time the band was to play in Alberta, but you dropped off the tour. What happened?

What happened was one of the shows previous to that, we were at a gas station, and Maria dropped her purse and her passport was in it, and we left and got almost two hours down the road when she realized she had lost it. We drove back and somehow, somebody found in her purse a number to call, and some truck driver had found it. We had spent hours driving around trying to find it. I think we were in Virginia. The truck driver that had found it was three hours down the road in the opposite direction. We got it back, but it had been run over a few times, so she wasn’t able to get in with that passport.