Top 5 Motionless in White Songs
To get ready for the Trinity of Terror Tour, I choose just one song from each of Motionless in White's albums
In support of their 2019 album Disguise and anticipation of their upcoming release, Scoring The End of the World, (dropping on June 10), the Pennsylvanian metalcore act Motionless in White have come together with their metalcore companions in Ice Nine Kills and hard rock mainstays in Black Veil Brides to assemble the “Trinity of Terror” tour, a triple-headliner that began on March 17 in Mesa, AZ and ends on April 27 in Norfolk, VA. Yours truly is going to be at the Myrtle Beach show on April 24, and if you’ve seen my previous article that breaks down the top 5 songs from Black Veil Brides, you might have a sense of how excited I am and how important these three bands are to me.
It’s another article in itself when it comes to explaining how I became a fan of these bands and why I enjoy them so much, but here’s what I’ll say about Motionless in White until I get those articles written – I first started listening to them in 2013, between their albums Infamous and Reincarnate, and they were the first metalcore band I ever heard. I was always a classic rock and metal guy, with Rush, Alice Cooper, Blue Oyster Cult, and Iron Maiden being my main squeezes at the time, so it probably goes without saying that Motionless in White was a bit of an adjustment for me. Nonetheless, I still gave them a chance, ended up finding a couple songs that I liked, and my tolerance for this style of music increased in the process. Fast forward to today and I love that side of metal music now, with Motionless in White becoming one of my favorite bands over the years, with their music being a fantastic outlet of catharsis (no pun intended, for any hardcore fans) for me. While I haven’t been around since the beginning, I’ve been a fan long enough to see how far they’ve come from when I first started listening to them, and it’s been great to see them become deservedly more and more successful, with their music also becoming bigger and better with each successive album release.
This is going to be a fun list to make, but also a bit of a challenging one for me. Since the band has five studio albums, I’m going to do something a little different with this top 5 and list the songs in chronological order, choosing one song from each album (along with an honorable mention, of course, because I’m indecisive and my preferences always change). I think doing it this way will also help show the progression with their music and how they’ve changed, improved, and explored other musical avenues while still staying true to their core sound. With that, here are my current favorite songs from each Motionless in White album.
5. ‘Cobwebs’ (Creatures, 2010)
When I was first getting into Motionless in White, Creatures was really my gateway. Infamous was the latest album at the time, but it was their debut that turned me into a fan initially. The two songs that turned my head were ‘Abigail’ and ‘Cobwebs,’ with the latter being my favorite. Again, I wasn’t used to this kind of music at the time and I didn’t fully understand, appreciate, or tolerate the technique and tone of screaming vocals, so the fact that ‘Cobwebs’ had more clean vocals than the other songs I heard while trying to learn about this band helped me ease into their style more and gain more of a tolerance for it. It was also my favorite lyrically because it was something I could relate to a lot at the time, and even today it continues to reflect a mindset that I find myself in every now and then. I think we’ve all had moments in life where we reflect on the past, and as much as I consider myself a forward thinker, there always comes a time where I think about what once was, maybe a little too much, and I find myself in a bit of a dismal mood as a result of it. Vocalist and lyricist Chris Motionless says it best when he explains, “I look forward to the future a lot, but at the same time, I feel so much regret for living as if things would never change.” We’ve all been there, right? Not only is this a song that’s helped me through those moments, but it’s also the one that made me a fan of the band in general, and I’m just glad I came across it when I did.
Honorable Mention: ‘Immaculate Misconception’
4. ‘Black Damask (The Fog)’ (Infamous, 2012)
Infamous is a strange album for me – sometimes I love it, sometimes I don’t. ‘Devil’s Night’ was the first song I ever heard by the band, and I had such a love-hate relationship with it. I didn’t necessarily like it, but I was so intrigued by it because it was so different than what I was used to hearing. Though I wasn’t the biggest fan of it, the chorus was stuck in my head for a long time afterwards, which prompted me to listen to the rest of the album. The whole album was full of moments like those for me – there were some parts I found I really enjoyed and some that I didn’t, yet I was still intrigued by them. It’s an album that I can go a while without listening to, but when I come back to it, those memories of initially exploring the band’s music come back to me and it reminds me of why I enjoyed the moments that I did.
The album-opener, ‘Black Damask (The Fog),’ is a song that I came to love after several listens. Once my tolerance and enjoyment of post-hardcore and metalcore music and vocals became what it is now, I had a real appreciation for this song, as well as the other heavier tracks that appear on the album, such as ‘Puppets 2 (The Rain)’ and ‘If It’s Dead, We’ll Kill It.’ As far as ‘Black Damask’ in particular though, this is where you can tell how heavily Motionless in White is influenced by Cradle of Filth. There are times where Motionless adopts a similar vocal style to Cradle of Filth frontman Dani Filth, and the lyrics sound like it could’ve been a collaborative effort between the two bands. I didn’t know much about Cradle of Filth at the time I first heard this song (I still don’t, if I’m being honest), but I was reading a lot of gothic poetry at the time. Reading the lyrics to this song reminded me a lot of the poetry I was reading, and I think that’s part of what made me enjoy this song as much as I did. It’s also just a really good song, and that’s that.
Honorable Mention: ‘Burned at Both Ends’
3. ‘Contemptress’ (Reincarnate, 2014)
I still remember when the Reincarnate album was first announced and the excitement I felt when I first heard the news. I could already tell the album was going to be a huge step-up from Infamous when the title track was released as the lead single that summer, and the anticipation for release day carried me through the rest of the season. When that day finally came, I couldn’t believe how much more cohesive and refined the band sounded – Motionless’s vocals showed considerable improvement and technical variety, and the music itself presented something new instead of just repeating previous releases. If there was any doubt that I was a real fan of this band before this album came out, it was eliminated, and my reverence was solidified once I listened through it the first time.
There are so many songs to choose from here (the same can also be said for their next two albums), like ‘Death March’ and ‘Dark Passenger,’ but a constant highlight for me came at the midpoint of the album with ‘Contemptress,’ which features In This Moment vocalist Maria Brink. Lyrically, the song seems to focus on the lustful on-and-off nature of a toxic relationship, which is something I thankfully can’t relate to, but it was one of the most surprising moments on the album for me in terms of music. Like I said, this whole album was a step-up, but this was one of the only songs that I felt was so different from the kind of music Motionless in White normally performs that it was almost as if it was written by another band. I mean that as a compliment, because I hate when bands get stagnant and every song on an album (or even worse, their whole catalog) sounds the same. I love when bands change things up, and Motionless in White is great at doing just that, while at the same time still releasing music that’s in line with what fans can come to expect. ‘Contemptress’ is a little more poppy than most of their other work, several parts of the song will get stuck in your head, and it shows how the band takes risks by broadening their musicality and channeling their creativity from a range of influences.
Honorable Mention: ‘Everybody Sells Cocaine’
2. ‘Hourglass’ (Graveyard Shift, 2017)
Graveyard Shift is a very solid album, one that goes in a similar direction as Reincarnate but is even more polished and balanced in sound. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve had songs like ‘Soft,’ ‘The Ladder,’ and ‘Voices’ on repeat when the album first came out. I wore those songs out like no other. Of course, the singles ‘570,’ ‘Eternally Yours,’ and ‘Rats’ are works of art in their own right, but the previously mentioned three songs were always in rotation. However, there was one song in particular that I would exclusively listen to when I was alone, and that was ‘Hourglass.’
This song had me hooked musically from the beginning with that amazing intro riff, and it kept me invested lyrically. Now I know the lyrics are about something completely different and they are personal to Motionless himself, but this song came out at a time where it was very easy for me to interpret them differently in the moment. I was struggling with some stress and burnout, with Graveyard Shift being released during the worst of it, and some of the lyrics in ‘Hourglass’ reflect the kinds of conversations that I would have with myself during that time. Being overwhelmed by everything going on around then had me thinking about a lot of big picture things because I felt stuck and stagnant. There’s a lot that I want to do in my life, but I always have doubts that I’ll be good enough to achieve certain things, that I have a complete sense of direction of how I can accomplish them, and that I’ll even have the time to do everything I hope to do. On top of the feeling of hitting a brick wall and going nowhere, hearing lyrics such as “one fear, one mind/no hope, no time,” “will I expire before my dreams unfold?/but if the future’s so bright, the path should glow,” and “am I just the sand encased in the hourglass?” were lines that spoke to me at that time. Thankfully, those trials and tribulations have subsided, and I’ve learned to thrive under pressure since then, but I’ll always remember how I felt the first time I heard this song. Listening to it now reminds me of that period and how I ended up getting through it, which makes the closing line “fear is not my fate” resonate a little louder for me.
Honorable Mention: ‘Queen for Queen’
1. ‘Thoughts & Prayers’ (Disguise, 2019)
Look, I love the fact that Motionless in White has explored their softer side with songs like ‘Wasp’ and ‘Another Life,’ and I hope they continue to do so because those songs are beautiful, but Motionless in White will always be my favorite anger translator. The Disguise album has some of the most emotionally relatable lyrics out of the whole band’s catalog, concerning the whole spectrum and not just anger, with the song ‘Headache’ being a prime example and neck-and-neck with the honorable mention for this album, but no song hit me harder when I first heard it than ‘Thoughts & Prayers.’
One thing that gets under my skin like no other is fake sympathy from fake people, and it makes my blood boil to hear the same regurgitated and hollow words from people who don’t really care. If something happens to me, I’d rather hear from nobody and stay in silence than be flooded with insincere commiseration from the same superficial people that say the same thing to everyone dealing with something. The opening lines, “I don’t want this, I don’t need this/I don’t give a single fuck about your thoughts and prayers,” really says it all. I’m lucky enough to have not gone through a ton of major personal tragedies, but I still know what it’s like to receive words of assurance, support, whatever you want to call it, from people that couldn’t care less and are just saying things to pretend to be nice. It drives me up a wall to see people be so artificial with each other, and this song is the best at channeling that anger.
The sheer vitriol you hear in the vocals combined with the heavy aggression in the music creates a rage that can’t be communicated with just words, and I love it. The lyrics clearly target a specific group of people, with them being the radical religious, but when I listen to the song, I don’t discriminate – fake and scummy people can be found all over the place, just walk outside. Therefore, I feel the need to generalize when I interpret the lyrics and point the finger at anyone and everyone that fits the bill. I’d like to point out that I am not a violent person and I try to stay relatively calm on the surface, so it’s songs like these that help me process those kinds of emotions, and nothing does it for me like ‘Thoughts and Prayers.’
Honorable Mention: ‘Holding on to Smoke’
If you like what you heard from this list, you can check out even more of the band's music wherever you listen (Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, YouTube, physical copies, etc.). You can also buy their merch and keep up with their tour dates by visiting their website here.