Motionless In White: Lies, Injustice, and the American Grave

“Previous albums we’ve made are just albums. This new album is a world.” That’s how Ricky Horror of MOTIONLESS IN WHITE describes the band’s brand new sixth album Scoring The End Of The World. And he’s certainly describing the album accurately, though the themes of the album certainly portray a world no sane person would ever want to live in. Unfeeling and greedy billionaires calling the shots while stepping on the backs of a working class populace barely able to survive, increasing global disasters and a world past the brink of irreparable climate change damage, and the most powerful country on earth populated with conspiracy believing maniacs? Oh, wait that sounds vaguely familiar. It’s this hard, long, look at the world and country the band calls home that underscores this album more than ever before, even for a band who has not been previously shy about calling out injustice and the failures of a capitalistic system that has failed its citizens. It’s a much more scathing, vitriolic, and down right pissed off record than anything that has come before, and it’s no wonder why, according to Horror.

“A lot of it came from COVID, honestly,” says Horror. “Just being stuck in one spot and everyone being alone and isolated. It gave us time to introspect and look at what’s going on in the world and how it’s affecting all of us. It’s as simple as that. It felt like we hit a breaking point as a society and as a world at that point, and I think a lot of the lyrical content was driven by that. It’s a microscopic look at the world and what’s happening to the people at the top and at the bottom.”

And just as diverse as the people in this world at a breaking point is the soundscapes and styles MOTIONLESS IN WHITE play with on here, and it goes a long way to showing their growth from fast paced, balls to the wall, horror tinged metalcore to a band that isn’t afraid to push their boundaries in both directions. Slaughterhouse, for example, is one of the heaviest tracks the band has put out to date, as vocalist Chris Motionless and KNOCKED LOOSE‘s Bryan Garris absolutely demolish the greedy millionaires and billionaires that float above the surface of disaster, when they wouldn’t last a second in the position of so many they tread upon. It’s a true call for a reckoning and a gory, fist pumping, riff smashing, breakdown heaving banger of a track that shows this band is still not to be trifled with. But then the album hits with tracks like Masterpiece and Sign Of Life, two songs with choruses and melodic sensibility and style that feel straight out of the BREAKING BENJAMIN and THREE DAYS GRACE playbook. And it absolutely works. Though it may strike old school fans in a way they may not enjoy, Horror explains that that style was intentional, and that as his band evolves, people shouldn’t turn their noses up at the post grunge bands that have inspired their hooks.

“BREAKING BENJAMIN is one of my favourite bands, and you can definitely hear their influence in a lot of the hooks on this album,” says Horror. “I think that despite those bands getting the bad rap that they do, they influence so much more than people give them credit for. I’ve always found it weird that it’s uncool to like bands just because they’re popular, but I’m constantly learning from bands like that. We implement a lot of that stuff into our music, and it’s super important.”

Just when there couldn’t be any more parallels between BREAKING BENJAMIN and MOTIONLESS IN WHITE, the band’s new album also sees them collaborating with video game composer Mick Gordon, who previously worked with BRING ME THE HORIZON on their Post Human: Survival Horror EP. Right from the release of the band’s first single for this album cycle, Cyberhex, it was evident the electronics on the record would be pushed to the forefront more than ever before, and Horror explains a lot of the sounds and textures explored on the album are due to his love of movie scores and game soundtracks.

“I pull a lot of influence from that kind of stuff more than anything else. There’s so many little accents you can add and pick up on when you’re listening to purely instrumental music, and you can dissect why they impact you emotionally. It all adds to the vibe of the album.”

And just what pieces of media has Horror digested that influenced the album? “I love the show on Netflix called Dark. The score for that show is so good and just so haunting. I also was playing Death Stranding, which I really enjoyed and it definitely was inspiring.”

MOTIONLESS IN WHITE has always taken a page from METALLICA‘s playbook and embraced the idea of the song sequel, and it’s fitting that the song Red, White, and Boom, which features BEARTOOTH‘s Caleb Shomo, is a spiritual sequel to the band’s song America off of 2012’s Infamous. There’s overt callbacks that no fan can miss, and the sequel only serves to make the original all the more impactful ten years later.

“I think that the parallel is right on the sleeve. It’s definitely not hidden,” says Horror. “Our band has always been passionate about the working class and those people feeling like they’re being taken advantage of and worked to death. That’s something that goes through all our albums, and the ability to revisit songs that fans enjoy is fun for us and them. For someone like Chris, there’s always an unfinished story and the opportunity to expand and further drive home the point he’s trying to get across.”

Looking back at that ten year anniversary of Infamous, an album showing the band just on the cusp of the impact they would soon make on the scene, Horror cringes a bit as he recalls memories from that time, and contrasts it with the attitude the band brought to the new record. “Infamous was such a weird record. It was the first and only time Chris and I have fought during the writing of an album. I ended up leaving the studio at the end of it because I was just like ‘I can’t be a part of this anymore.’ It was us not seeing eye to eye as far as we went into the studio with what each of us thought we were doing, and when we got there we weren’t on the same page at all. Now, we typically have a conversation before an album starts where we’ll say ‘what do you think, where’s the album going, what kind of sound are we working with, and what do we want to explore that we haven’t before.’”

MOTIONLESS IN WHITE have stood as one of those bands that has been fascinating to watch the rise of. They have moved from the metalcore underground to becoming staples of the scene right before the eyes of the heavy music community, and their growth, both musically and personally, are reflected in how passionate they are in connecting with their fanbase on an intimate level that few bands do. And now that Scoring The End Of The World has released, Horror is happier than ever with where the band is now, and doesn’t seem keen on moving backward anytime soon.

“At the beginning of the band, we just wanted to write the hardest, heaviest albums that anyone had ever heard. Now, it’s so much more about connecting with fans. We are constantly asking ourselves ‘how do we connect with fans,’ ‘how do we create something they can latch onto, take with them, and uplift them?’ It’s a lot less of us wanting to be the hardest angry band in the world and much more about finding a way to give back to people and connecting with them. It feels more special now. Playing songs like Another Life and Voices, and having that singalong. It’s just so much more powerful than the hardest breakdown. As much as it sucks for 15 year old me to say that, it really is true.”

Scoring The End Of The World is out now via Roadrunner Records.

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