Motionless In White’s last record, ‘Creature’ (though recently re-released), was a bit vapid in places, something that cannot be afforded in the metal-core world with its ultra-gated guitar, hyper-processed drums and immaculately recorded vocals.
Occasionally it broke ranks from its case study to show the listener that the band, who have suffered a number of line-up changes from shifting their focus, have both depth and delicacy; but for the most part it remained a slightly under-produced, but well conceived example of modern metal-core. Heavier on the clean vocals than ‘Infamous’, it contained a significantly smaller margin of bravery and scattergun hat-tipping than is evident on their current opus, but this was married to a over-bearing sense of purpose; the MIW of ‘Creature’ sound more fragile and apologetic at their heart than this incarnation.
‘Infamous’ is a sneering, kohl-smeared, pose of an album; its eyes closed, lost in its own reverie. It’s that girl with the impossible hair, who’s time you feel like you’re perpetually wasting. After three spins end to end, I was on the verge of taking this album aside and giving it a good talking to about trying harder and being more at ease with itself, deciding the type of music it wanted to make and not what it felt it needed to be to garner appeal. The fourth listen changed everything and I understood.
There are two ways to look at this record. One is through the cynical eyes of a world-weary adult, who only hears the clumsy lyrics, the totally uncalled for swearing and the empty void where the organic elements of sound used to be. This view would call out the laser-guided, teen-snaring imagery, the countless signatures poached from other bands (Chester Bennington’s bent-double howl on ‘A-M-E-R-I-C-A’, cut & paste David Draiman on the monkey yelps or whatever the kids are calling them these days and mid-period Cradle Of Filth in the nicely executed pop-BM moments to name a few), the mile wide, inch deep, production and the borderline pastiche of the metalcore style. But the 16 year old, I used to be, sees just how much is really trying to rear its head through the clearly quite hurt Chris Cerulli. When I looked into the history of this group I watched a lot of live footage and there was something there that augmented my view.
In a live video of ‘Scissorhands’ from last year, I saw the band in their natural habitat. Cerulli is, by all accounts, quite tall, and with a soft, kind, look in his face. The rest of the band with their half-face paint and synchronised movement look so young, as to be positively infantile and one assumes they must be. As the song begins Cerulli bangs wholeheartedly with the rest of the troops but something is missing; he can feel the crowd aren’t responding as they should, there should be more dynamism. At this point he turns away, and I could feel his heart sink then strengthen itself to get back in the game. Because this is their vehicle, this is their voice, what they use to represent themselves and their way of life.
The big mistake Motionless In White have made on this album is putting their most emotionally bare, ‘Burned At Both Ends’ and well studied songs, ‘Devil’s Night’, at the start; which threw me completely as the remainder was so confused and bitter. Taken as a group of individuals lashing out at the world through militarily precise re-assignments of the music that they grew up listening to; this is a good record. But, the running order shows a band not fully in tune with who they are.
I get the feeling from both the lyrical content and live presentation that this band believe in what they’re doing and saying a great deal. The song-writing is strong but only the sum of its parts, and though MIW are very much of the new school, that doesn’t mean they haven’t got anything left to give. Metal-core pulled from a huge number of genres to come into being, historically speaking, and there’s plenty of scope on ‘Infamous’ for the band to go on to greater things. This is the soundtrack to your next gig if you’re 16 and live in America, as you’ll see a good, growing, band that know what they’re doing.
Support them, unless they play ‘Hatefuck’, which is really, really, embarrassing.