Motionless In White’s debut studio album Creatures was released on October 12, 2010.
10th anniversary and, damn, we metalcore kids got old.
My first experience with Motionless In White was seeing the music video for “Abigail”, the first music video released for the album. Doing a music video that was a modernized telling of The Crucible/the Salem Witch Trials lured me right in. It was the fall of my senior year of high school and I was bit by bit getting into more and more metal, horror, and true crime. Learning about Lizzie Borden, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the Salem Witch Trials appealed to me then and still does. It caught my attention and kept it throughout the entire decade that has since passed.
Personnel on the album recording were Chris Motionless on lead vocals, Ryan Sitowski on lead guitar, TJ Bell on rhythm guitar, Ricky “Horror” Olson on bass, Josh Balz on keyboard, and Angelo Parente on drums. The song “Abigail” also features Nick Brooks of metalcore band It Dies Today. Motionless, Sitowski, and Olson are the only members still in the line-up today.
“.Com Pt. II” is part 2 of the song “Schitzophrenicannibalisticsexfest.com” from their debut EP The Whorror. “We Only Come Out at Night” is the re-recorded version of a song originally on the band’s second EP When Love Met Destruction and “City Lights” is a re-recorded version of the song “Bananamontana” from the same EP.
Apart from “Abigail”, “Immaculate Misconception”, “Creatures”, and “Puppets (The First Snow)” were all released as single with accompanying music videos. “Puppets (The First Snow)” was a performance music video done with pieced together clips of various concerts. The video for “Immaculate Misconception” was directed by Cody Blue Snider, director and screenwriter and son of Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, who also appears in the video. Dee Snider has been openly supportive of the young band, stating in an interview with AOL Noisecreep that, “”Bands like Motionless in White deal with the same misjudgment and ignorance that Twisted Sister dealt with when we were first starting out. In its own way, ‘Immaculate Misconception’ is the ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ for its generation.”
Motionless In White appeals to classic metalcore fans who also live and breathe Halloween. They’ve released merch with images of their pumpkin logo, crows, Christopher Lee’s portrayal of Dracula, Sam from Trick R Treat, A Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, The Twilight Zone, and more.
The album’s aggressive and purposeful opening track “Immaculate Misconception” is a crowd favorite and, for a period, was their concert closing song. It was their closing song both times I saw them at Warped Tour. “Abigail” still gets played as a treat for the fans that have been around for a while.
The first time I saw Motionless In White live was on the All Stars Tour 2011, while they were still touring in support of Creatures. The stacked tour also featured Chelsea Grin, Iwrestledabearonce, In This Moment, and a handful of others, depending on your city’s stop. That was the first time I was in the middle of a mosh pit, and mind you I’m about 5’5”, and I still managed to get about two rows from the stage. I met Ryan Sitowski and Ricky Horror at the merch table after their set and they signed my ticket and I got pictures with both. I haven’t met any other members of the band but, hey, maybe one day that will change. I did order a signed poster that was released in promotion for Graveyard Shift, and while it’s very cool, it’s not the same.
I saw Motionless In White perform on the Vans Warped Tour two times, 2014 and 2016, and both times they closed their set with “Immaculate Misconception”. During the 2016 tour, Ice Nine Kills vocalist Spencer Charnas came out to perform “Abigail” and seeing two of my favorite lead singers performing together was a personal Warped Tour highlight.
All of their albums feature at least one song that is more than suitable for the spooky Halloween season but the entirety of Creatures fits the vibe. Maybe we can contribute that to the murder of crows on the album cover. Some of the songs from Creatures carried over in the form of sequels on following albums. Most recently, “Undead Ahead”, based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the Headless Horseman, came back in the form of “Undead Ahead 2: The Tale of The Midnight Ride” on their 2019 release, Disguise.
Creatures features some of the rawest emotions that the band has put out. With all of the lyrics written by Motionless, Olson, Balz, and Parente, with help from fans on the title song. “Puppets (The First Snow)” was also written by Jason Suecof, a sound engineer and songwriter known for his work with metal bands such as Trivium and The Black Dahlia Murder.
“This is a love song, a threnody for these years of worthless waste
And now my hatred’s all I fucking have left
I’ve never had the words to say, but I can quote them all
I am human and I need to be loved just like everybody else does”
In a few years, I’ll be turning 30. My Motionless In White shirt that looks like a poster for The Lost Boys hasn’t fit me in years but I would be a liar if I said that “Abigail” didn’t make me automatically want to start headbanging with the same aggressive nature that Kittie’s “Brackish” hits with.
On October 2nd, Motionless In White posted a teaser video on their social media pages with the lines, “Do we want this? Or do we need this?” growing in intensity, as heard in the beginning of the “Creatures” music video. The band has said they have a lot of big plans for October.
So let’s get ready to celebrate, Creatures.
Another One For The Fire 