Review Summary: A misguided, directionless mess.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Motionless In White has earned themselves a large, well-deserved fanbase in the modern metalcore scene. They’ve achieved more mainstream success than most of their genre peers could ever dream of – and that’s largely to do with their captivating blend of gothic aesthetics, horror-themed lyrics, and a proven ability to write a killer hard rock hook that’s destined to dominate metal-themed radio stations around the country. Surprisingly enough, they’ve attained all this success without any sort of reinvention or change in sound; they’ve largely remained loyal to the same style of music for nearly twenty years now – albeit with varying degrees of heaviness. Their newest release,
Decades, is no different. However, the album features a surprisingly low overall level of quality compared to past releases. Although it occasionally makes attempts to throw curveballs by introducing new styles for the band, their efforts prove to be remarkably weak, and these occasional forays into uncharted territory are, more often than not, embarrassingly out of place in their respective songs. On top of that,
Decades features many questionable lyrical choices, and feels more like an disorganized, directionless collection of songs rather than a cohesive listening experience.
For what it’s worth,
Decades starts with a bang; the opening track (named after the album itself) is a lightning bolt of energy, featuring an electrifying introduction, a catchy chorus that doesn’t sacrifice any heaviness, and a genuinely fun breakdown. Unfortunately, from there, the album only goes downhill. The following track,
log_in//crash_out, is far from terrible, but is incredibly formulaic, and has a handful of creative choices that are a bit baffling to listen to. For example, why exactly did the song need to feature a children’s choir, or have weirdly out-of-place altered vocals after the breakdown? Not that I necessarily blame them, but the song very much comes off as the track they expect to take off as an XM radio staple, due to its easily accessible chorus and sprinkles of heaviness here-and-there. From this point onward, the band’s creative decisions only get worse.
Fight Like Hell and
Playing God both suffer from the same fault of featuring cartoonishly macho, faux tough guy lyrics.
Playing God is particularly frustrating; Corey Taylor delivers an appropriately unhinged vocal performance, but the song as a whole is dragged down by its cringe-worthy lyricism. Lines like “get fucked or shut the fuck up” and “lick the fucking dirt off my boots like a good dog” come off as incredibly juvenile, and only serve to detract from the song’s overall quality. Once these two tracks reach their conclusion, we reach a rather confusing – and downright awful – turn of events: the band takes a sharp turn towards electronic and nu metal. Rather than expanding on the band’s stylistic identity, these detours feel haphazardly slapped onto songs that would’ve been stronger had they remained rooted in the band’s gothic metalcore foundation.
All That I’ve Ever Known has an ear-gratingly bad, out of place rap verse, topped off by an outdated dubstep breakdown that’ll have you double checking to make sure the song you’re listening to didn’t just unexpectedly change. And this isn’t the only song to feature unpleasant, misguided electronic influences; most of the remainder of
Decades from here on out features less-than-subtle electronic elements.
I want to be perfectly clear: I’m not faulting Motionless In White simply for dabbling in other genres. There have been numerous other metalcore acts that have tried – and succeeded at – incorporating electronic or techno elements into their established sound. The fault doesn’t lie in the idea, but rather the execution. Simply put, their attempts at mixing in elements of other genres into their established brand of metalcore just aren’t satisfying to listen to, and more often than not, harm the overall quality of their respective songs.
On top of the aforementioned faults with
Decades, the album also suffers from an overall lack of cohesion. It feels like Motionless In White decided to throw a handful of darts at the board to see what would stick…only for us to slowly watch the darts fall off one by one.
R.I.P feels very out of place because its over-the-top melodramatic nature clashes with the songs surrounding it, and the electronic-heavy second half of the album has awkward pacing, mostly due to
Afraid Of The Dark (an admittedly solid and satisfyingly heavy track) being placed in between
Blood Pact and
Sunglasses At Night. The former is an overproduced song with heavily altered, unpleasant vocals, and the latter is an awkward, out of place (and, by my own admission, annoyingly catchy) remake of the Corey Hart hit from 1983.
All in all,
Decades feels like a massive swing-and-miss from Motionless In White. I’m unsure if their unexpected foray into electronic territory was an attempt to appeal to a broader mainstream audience, but the experiment failed greatly. Although the album’s title track, as well as
Afraid Of The Dark, are both highlights – it leaves a sour taste in my mouth considering the album’s primary single, as well as its opener, are the only things worth writing home about. That means, assuming you heard the album’s singles before it was released, you’ll have heard the best of what
Decades has to offer only three minutes into the journey. What’s most frustrating is knowing that Motionless In White is capable of much better, as was proven by 2023’s
Scoring The End Of The World – an album that featured many of the band’s usual over-the-top theatrics, but in a way that felt more fluid and satisfying to listen to. As a fan, I can only hope that
Decades is eventually looked back on as an unfortunate misstep. As it stands, the album is an extraordinary disappointment, and is easily the worst that Motionless In White has ever produced.
1.5 out of 5
