I know I’m old, but I was about to write that Motionless In White were a “modern metal phenomenon”. Then I realised their debut album came out 16 years ago.
Decades is well named, then. The Pennsylvanians have been together for 20 years, and their seventh album doesn’t so much look back as celebrate the fact that they are still here. The opening title track is defiant rather than nostalgic: this is a victory lap, but it sounds like they intend to keep running for a good while yet.
You can call them “metalcore” if you like, but there’s way more going on here. Indeed, you’re never quite sure how “log_in//crash_out” works, just that it does. It travels from electronic pulses to something genuinely heavy and manages to cram everything into less than four minutes.
“R.I.P.” brings in singer and producer Skylar Grey, whose harmonies provide the perfect counterbalance to Chris Motionless. It’s as close as Decades gets to a ballad, although naturally it’s a dark, theatrical and slightly unsettling one.
When “Fight Like Hell” drops in arenas, the front rows are going to lose their shit. There’s so much anger in this, and just when you think it can’t ratchet up the intensity any further, Motionless launches into a rap.
The album-announcing single “Playing God” features Corey Taylor at his aggressive best, and the levels of absolutely everything go into the red. There’s astonishing fury here, directed at those who “cash in on the clicks for rage bait”, and Taylor sounds as energised and venomous as he has in years.
There are no guests on “All That I’ve Ever Known”, and it’s altogether more straightforward. That is to say, it’s modern, brutally heavy and somehow ready to fill arenas. Motionless In White have become masters at making music that feels dangerous and enormous at the same time.
“Blood Rave”, featuring Anthony Martinez of Dark Divine, changes the mood again. The last time I went to a club that didn’t have a gig on was in 1999. I was trying to impress a girl. It didn’t work. Still, I imagine this would sound magnificent in one, with its collision of metal and electronic music built for flashing lights and packed dancefloors.
The thing about Motionless In White – and the reason I like them when I’m indifferent to pretty much every other band of this type – is that they are damn catchy. “Love At First Bite” has hooks everywhere, and there’s something about its gothic swagger that suggests South Of Salem could do a fine version of it.
“Count Back From Zero” underlines how much ground these songs cover. Ideas that might sustain entire records for other bands are used for a few seconds before MIW race off somewhere else. Somehow, though, none of it feels forced or stitched together.
That is especially true of “Blood Pact”. “Are you one of us or one of them?” asks Motionless, and their tribe is ready to accept you. That sense of belonging has always been important in this music, and here it’s delivered with the force of an arena-sized rallying cry.
“Afraid Of The Dark” is heroically heavy and mellifluous all at once. That combination shouldn’t work, but by now you know that Motionless In White aren’t particularly interested in what should work. When the guttural roar of “walk with me” arrives, it doesn’t sound much like an invitation.
“Sunglasses At Night” closes the record with a cover of Corey Hart’s 1980s hit. You always want to start singing “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” when it begins, and if the thing were any more 80s it would have shoulder pads as well as sunglasses. Naturally, MIW turn it into something recognisably their own.
That, ultimately, is the triumph of Decades. It can be electronic, melodic, gothic, furious, ridiculously heavy and gloriously catchy, sometimes within the same song. Sixteen years after their debut and two decades into their career, Motionless In White are still a modern metal phenomenon after all.
Rating: 8/10
