Review Summary: An improved edition of an abysmal album.
Infamous was a bland album which focused more on sounding like other albums, rather than developing something unique. A great number of songs borrowed massively from the sounds of other artists such as Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, and Bleeding Through to name a few. While this in itself sounds like an intriguing concept, it’s been poorly executed here. With this in mind, I’m here to talk about the newly revised version of the album; not the original release.
I actually rather enjoyed Motionless in White’s album Creatures, despite finding every band that fell under the category of ‘metal-core’ to be rather generic and dry (besides a few very talented artists). I enjoyed Creatures; not because it was innovative or creative, but because it was fun to listen to. Creatures had a very unique atmosphere; unlike most bands of the genre, Motionless in White centered their themes on horror films and Gothic imagery. I can admit that because of this, I was very excited to see what they did on their sophomore release.
After being severely disappointed by the original release of Infamous, then came the deluxe edition which after reading more about, I discovered was completely re-hauled and served as a far more satisfying record in comparison to the original Infamous. While it still lacks in its lyrical department, this re-issue of Infamous proved to be light years ahead of its predecessor. Vocally, a lot has been altered; this is good in some areas, but not in others. While the delivery of the clean vocals on the previous release sounded extremely unimpressive and often times terrible; here they sound almost robotic and overly compressed, giving a flat sound to them. Some of the lowly screamed vocals sound like they’ve been heavily altered and they often times sound very unimpressive and fake. The Marilyn Manson-esque vocals on the third track ‘AMERICA’ have been surprisingly replaced by a deeper, more unique sounding set of vocals; as well as more varying vocals from low to high screams.
Some of the songs like ‘Devil’s Night’ sound more original on this release than they did previously due to the fact that ‘Devil’s Night’ sounded like a carbon copy of Slipknot’s ‘Psychosocial’ both vocally and instrumentally. Here, it sounds similar in its riff, but that’s about it. Another example of vocal changes are the more frequent uses of Chris Cerulli’s extremely high shrieks which seemed almost absent on the previous release of the album. In my opinion, one of the higher points of Creatures was the vocals, which were very unimpressive on the sophomore release.
The mix itself has been drastically changed on this edition of Infamous; the instruments often come off as flat and hollow, despite being instrumentally better than the original in the fact that riffs have become more complex and some solos have been thrown in. This version of the album is also extended as it features two new songs as well as three remixes and one alternate version of the song ‘AMERICA’. The new tracks ‘Fatal’ and ‘Sick from the Melt’ are both rather promising and both stand out as above average songs while at the same time adding to the album.
The overall sound on this edition of the album is more like their previous album ‘Creatures’ each song brings back the familiar atmosphere ‘Creatures’ created and I’d highly suggest this album to anyone who enjoyed ‘Creatures’ but was fairly disappointed with Infamous.
