Album review: Motionless in White – Decades

Welcome to the cure of my „music burnout“. Or let’s say: I’m not sure if this album is going to cure me entirely from what I’ve perceived in the past few weeks as some kind of „bruned out“ feeling when it comes to music. Hardly anything could spark joy, I kept skipping songs and I didn’t feel like listening to music at all.

However, Decades was an album I was expecting so damn much – and then it took me, kinda, ages to finally listen to it. In the past year or so, Motionless in White have climbed the ranks of my „fave band“ list and the releases so far from this album were mostly promising (mostly as in Afraid of the Dark and R.I.P. never failing to make me bawl my eyes out and helping me through the more difficult hours, whereas Playing God was a major disappointment at first because I had so damn much hoped for a feature with Will Ramos and then „only“ got Corey Taylor [take out the stones, I think Slipknot are overrated]). So OF COURSE I WAS HYPED. But also careful, because of my lack of interest in music lately. And then their official shop let us down, on top of everything, and our pre-order wasn’t shipped on time. Without further notice, I would like to add. There was absolutely NO sign at all that the order would be delayed. My partner even had to double-check if we had actually preordered the album. The shipping happened so late that the album arrived while we were on holiday. Yay.

So my first listen of this album was actually via Tidal on the car while on the Autobahn towards France and heck, I can’t say I did take anything in that time that went beyond „Okay, well, this sounds like it was made for a goth club“.

It wasn’t until today that I finally dared to give the album a proper listen and what can I say – I feel like there won’t be much else playing in the upcoming days. Or weeks. Or even months. I don’t know.

Before diving deeper into individual songs I would like to point out a) that the album has 14 songs (okay 13, Fight Like Hell appears twice) out of which we only knew THREE before the release, which filled me with a lot of joy and b) the album is about 54 minutes long. That’s almost an hour. Now that a lot of album have an average playing time of 35 minutes – even more joy! Thanks MIW!

What’s striking about the album, however, is that it feels like you can split it into two halves: The first part of the album is mostly metal-ish and similar to the sound Motionless in White have established with the at least two albums before that. There’s electronics, there’s apocalypse, there’s heavy growls and heavy guitars in the opener Decades. Of course, with R.I.P. there’s also a ballad on it, but it’s an MIW-typical metal ballad you could say. With Playing God and Fight Like Hell we have continued rage and I’m all here for it. I’m digging it. I love the breakdown of Decades, it’s the kind of stuff I wanna go crazy to in the moshpit. Same for Playing God, both have the Slaughterhouse-vibe and intensity. With log_in//crash_out we’re kinda back in the cyber-influenced sound. So far, all of this sounds familiar. Love it. LOVE IT.

And then there’s Blood Rave and suddenly the album takes a turn that is on the one hand unexpected and on the other hand, I would say, rather unsurprising – and absolutely refreshing! The second half of the album is, I’d say, some solid Industrial Metal and omg, I so damn want to dance to this in a goth club? (Please note: I haven’t been dancing in a goth club since … Idk, 2013 when I somehow found my way into Leipzig’s Darkflower, but holy hell would I make a return to said club, or Oberhausen’s Kulttempel, if there was an MIW themed party!)

In the second hard of the album, Motionless in White doubled down on the electronics and urgh, I absol-fucking-lutely love it. Fits their vibe. And also, in the past I’ve quite often struggled with pointing out the actual genre of Motionless in White because they’ve been experimenting with a lot of influences over the years and it gives me the idea of a „fuck it, we feel like doing it, so we’ll do it“ somehow. Which makes it seem authentic, I guess. I don’t know. As a matter of fact, when I look at the aesthetics of Motionless in White in general, and this album in particular, a Blood Rave in a goth club just seems very much on brand. (Speaking of Blood Rave, while listening to the album once again I suddenly got a very strong Electric Callboy vibe during the bridge / breakdown. I want to share my partner’s comment with you because it made me snort: „MIW do better Electric Callboy breakdowns than Electric Callboy lately.“ Anyway, given that I’ve been a hardcore Electric Callboy fan in the past few years, and I’m also pretty much into bands like Turmion Kätilöt and Eisbrecher, I guess it’s unsurprising that MIW are reaching my heart with their Industrial-ish approach).

Also Love at First Bite is such a fun song? And even more dance-able? To be honest I’m having a hard time imagining numbers like this being played on big arena stages, given the fact that that’s what MIW tend to fill these days. Personally, I’d enjoy these songs more in a club. As I’ve mentioned before. I’m also a sucker for their Sunglasses at Night cover, which I personally love more than the original. And it’s my go-to quote lately whenever I pull out my sunglasses at a concert because I can no longer stand the stage lights 🙃

Honorable mention before I close this case: Hollywood is such an ear worm, I love the guitars and all that and urgh, yes. Yes. I guess this is one of my (very many) new favourite songs. I started singing along at the first listen, not knowing the lyrics but just going by vibe because it’s so damn catchy.

All in all: 10/10, will perhaps not listen to much else anymore. Thank you for curing my music burnout at least a little and please come back soon with all those great songs to hit the German stages.