Review Summary: A shamelessly inauthentic celebration of an unearned legacy.
Motionless in White have devolved into full blown novelty at this point. In fairness, they've sort of always been that way, but their spooky, brooding aesthetic used to be endearing and fun. Now, it's just f*cking lame. I get it, there's an audience that eats this sh*t up. But pigeon-holing yourself into a box is rarely, if ever, a good thing. When you resign to one stylistic idea or statement for too long, you're doomed to stumble when you try something new, and Motionless has certainly stumbled with
Decades, their seventh studio album. Even worse yet, they were never that great at what they made their calling card anyway! Ice Nine Kills has always pulled off the horror vibes and theatrics way better than these guys have, and are head and shoulders a superior artistic product. But even their shtick is getting a bit long in the tooth for my liking at this point, so Motionless in White really has nothing going for them as we attempt to take a bite out of this especially rotten apple.
Decades sees Motionless going full SiriusXM Octane, trying (and failing miserably) at electronic and Limp Bizkit-esque nu metal sensibilities that are so painfully beyond their already limited wheelhouse. It's the best they can hope for career-wise, though, at this juncture, because even their heavier early material lacked that spark or direction that many of the band's contemporaries (like INK as mentioned) managed to find. 2014's
Reincarnate was probably the one time in this band's career that they really put it all together and yielded a consistently good showing of performance, production and writing. Subsequent albums have featured sparse moments of promise, but nothing to meaningfully separate the band from their peers.
Decades is their first serious nosedive into dismal depths of creative bankruptcy. The title track boasts of a lot of screamed vocals, but Chris Cerulli's voice has deteriorated to the point where it sounds like he's gargling nails. Skylar Grey, with her impressive pop portfoilo, contributes guest vocals to "R.I.P." and both she and Cerulli lay down listless and indistinct vocal turns on this exceptionally boring slice of radio fodder.
"Fight Like Hell" might be the single worst song this band has ever recorded, and one of the worst singles from a metal band released this decade. Cerulli attempt to rap Fred Durst-style on the second verse, and I'd be laughing a lot longer and a lot harder if it weren't so vomit-inducing. You want to hear the crazy part? There's
twelve f*cking songwriters credited on this thing.
Twelve f*cking people sat down for a writing session, brainstormed, and
this was the best they could muster?! "This is my brutality," Cerulli shamelessly proclaims on the main hook, not a shred of embarrassment or self-awareness crossing his bite-sized mind. The lyrics on this one are particularly juvenile and inane. What's more is that several songs on
Decades were penned by an overly large number of songwriters, with a grand total of four writing credits attributed to the band themselves.
Things do not get better as we trek forward. Later on, "Love At First Bite" glides in on artificial organs and a pop beat that isn't nearly as danceable as the band thinks it is. Shame, because the buildup towards the first chorus is competently constructed and seems to be teeing us up for the payoff of a hard-hitting chorus, before we instead find that the guitars have been traded for dull, neutered beats and synth washes. The album's lead-off single "Afraid of the Dark" scanned as a decent enough track the first time I listened to it, but this song specifically exposes another gaping problem with this album. Motionless in White
love referencing their past, even though they're not nearly relevant enough to warrant doing so. "Afraid of the Dark" follows the lead of past songs like 2016's "570" and 2020's "Creatures X: To the Grave" in being an explicit celebration of the band's legacy, even name-dropping the band's 2009 EP
When Love Met Destruction. But then it takes lyrics from "570" ('From Stockholm to Scranton/If you mean it, you'll make it') and just straight up copies and pastes them onto this song the way a lazy director would take unedited B-roll from one film to use in another. For a band that seems to stand so proud of what they've achieved, they can't even be chuffed to sit and think about writing something original or from the heart to convey that supposed gratitude.
This album f*cking blows, man. Motionless in White are the Maroon 5 of metalcore bands at this point. There's an army of co-writers and producers lending themselves to this thing, and it's this bad? There's really no excuse for that. As a Scranton native myself, I've always rooted for this band and appreciated how they, at least ostensibly, try to represent our home in a positive way. But this album is nothing to write home about at all. This in no way should be posited as a symbol of what creative talent comes out of northeast Pennsylvania. Still tethered to their tired gimmicks while quarter-assing their ploys at diversifying,
Decades is easily the worst Motionless in White album to date. It's pretty damn
awful.
