Motionless in White

Motionless in White is an American Metal band from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Formed in 2005, the band consists of Chris Motionless (Lead Vocals), Ricky Horror (Guitar), Ghost (Bass), Ryan Sitkowski (Guitar), Josh Balz (Keyboards) and Brandon Richter (Drums) . The band has stated that their band name derived from the Eighteen Visions song, "Motionless and White".^[1] Motionless In White is known for their dark, horror themed lyrics, heavy, ominous sound, Goth styled physical appearances, and their energetic and demanding live shows. All of the bands material is entirely composed by both Chris Motionless and Ricky Horror, with both members taking on each instrumental role for the writing and recording process. Motionless in White is currently signed to Fearless Records and have released two EPs and two full-length albums. Their debut full length, Creatures, reached #175 on the Billboard 200 upon its release in 2010. Their sophomore album, Infamous, charted in multiple sections in the Billboard stats: #53 on the Billboard 200, #19 on Top Rock Albums, #9 on Top Independent Albums, and #5 on Top Hard Rock Albums.^[2]

The band has been featured in many publications world wide including more notably the cover of Kerrang!, Orkus and Alternative Press. They have Several music videos for songs off of Creatures and Infamous, two of which were directed by son of Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, Cody Blue Snider. They have toured on many noteworthy tours in their career such as The Vans Warped Tour, Soundwave Music Festival, The All Stars tour, as well as touring with many other artists such as Marilyn Manson, In This Moment, Bleeding Through, Asking Alexandria and Black Veil Brides.

[edit] History

[edit] Formation and The Whorror (2005–2007)

Motionless in White was founded in 2005 by members Chris Motionless, who played guitar and lead vocals, Angelo Parente on drums, Frank Polumbo on guitar, and Kyle White on bass during high school. With a sound, at the time, being influenced by alternative rock, emo and post-hardcore bands, they incepted many other titles into the group until finally settling on what would be Motionless in White and later chose to follow a more heavy metal sound, descriptively; a metalcore musical style highly influenced by gothic and industrial metal bands, and carried this sound on as their signature style after the release of their 2005 self-distributed demo.

Within the year after the release of their demo, new member Josh Balz was added as the band's keyboardist, Frank Polumbo took over on bass and new members, Michael Costanza and TJ Bell, were added to the band as the new guitarists, moving Chris Motionless solely to lead vocals. They recorded their first EP The Whorror and released it the same year through Masquerade Recordings.

[edit] When Love Met Destruction (2008–2009)

After touring in-support of the The Whorror, Motionless in White had written enough songs to complete a full-length album. Their ambition to record a full-length was hobbled by the fact that they were still signed to local label, Masquerade Recordings, but did not stop at going along to complete work on the project. The album was named When Love Met Destruction.^[3] When Love Met Destruction was recorded in 2008, and was expected to be released the same year, however it never reached an official release, all of its songs however, did leak online.^[4]

The band then parted ways with guitarist Michael Costanza and brought in current guitarist Ryan Sitkowski before touring in support of When Love Met Destruction. On a brief stint on the East Coast Indie Stage on The Vans Warped Tour, the band caught the attention of larger label, Tragic Hero Records where they were signed to the label for a brief amount of time before shifting to Fearless Records before the end of 2008.^[5] At this point, Motionless in White then made the decision to re-record six of the eleven tracks that were supposed to make up When Love Met Destruction, re-qualifying the release from a full album, to an EP. Despite being signed to Fearless before the months leading up to the release of the EP form of When Love Met Destruction, it was distributed through Tragic Hero on February 17, 2009.^[5] The song "Ghost in the Mirror" was made as the band's first ever single and had a music video produced for it.

[edit] Departure of Polumbo and Creatures (2009–2010)

After the release of When Love Met Destruction, bassist Frank Polumbo left Motionless in White because of his growing disinterest in the band's style of music. Although leaving the genre behind, he is not credited on being on bad terms with the band. With Polumbo's departure, Motionless in White added Bellevue, Washington native, Ricky "Horror" Olson as their new permanent bass player in October 2009.^[6] Months later, Motionless in White entered the studio during May 2010 to record their debut full-length, Creatures^[7] with Andrew Wade as the chosen producer. The record's first single, "Abigail", was released in September via the band's Myspace page and was very well received. A music video for the song was released a few months afterward, along with following music videos over the next 2 years for title track "Creatures", the first track of the record "Immaculate Misconception" and a live music video for "Puppets (The First Snow)" which was filmed during the bands summer on The All Stars Tour in 2011.

Creatures was released on October 12, 2010 through Fearless, and claimed the 175th slot on the Billboard Top 200 charts,^[8] and #6 on the Heatseekers chart.

[edit] Departure of Bell and new music video premieres (2010–2011)

On Wednesday May 4, 2011, guitarist Thomas Joseph "TJ" Bell was fired from the band.^[9] Reasons for the matter explained from Bell's perspective were that while he was handling bass substitution duties for Escape the Fate, he was expected to meet along with the rest of Motionless in White in Orlando, Florida by that tour's end, but instead decided to arrive in Los Angeles to deal with his ongoing financial issues. According to the band, Bell left in the middle of Motionless in White's tour schedule to fill-in as a bassist for Escape the Fate and also did not inform the rest of the members early enough in advance that he would not be available during those weeks. This action forced the band to be without their rhythm guitar parts during their performances.^[10][11] Motionless in White stated "If our live performance didn’t HEAVILY depend on having 2 guitarists then it wouldn’t have been a huge deal to us.. but unfortunately having 1 guitar player in a band like ours causes your show to suffer greatly. We agreed to let TJ go" along with an explanation about how they experienced many disagreements with Bell throughout the years of being a band.^[11] However, later interviews with Chris Motionless and Angelo Parente have stated that the bands deciding factor for removing Bell from the band was due to his alcohol and drug abuse, and that him leaving the band in the midst of their tour to play with another band was the straw that broke the camel's back.

After Bell's departure, Olson then switched his position in the band from playing bass to rhythm guitar, which then left the group in-audition, once again, for a new bass player. In the tours Motionless in White performed after Olson's switch to rhythm guitar, a man with an unknown name began playing bass, finally confirmed as being Devin Sola, who now goes by "Ghost", a substitute bassist. Sola was officially confirmed as the band's new bassist on November 27, 2011.^[12]

[edit] Infamous (2012—present)

In early 2012, Motionless In White contributed to the "Kerrang!Metallica The Black Album: Covered" on the song, "My Friend Of Misery."

Motionless In White decided on working with two separate producers to accomplish a very wide array of sounds and styles for Infamous. It was then announced that Infamous was to be produced by Jason Suecof and musician Tim Sköld.^[13] After much of 2012 for Chris Motionless and Ricky Horror was spent in the studio, the record was completed and was pushed by Motionless that fans should expect something different than what they are used to from Motionless In White. The record Infamous takes on more than ever Motionless' effort to bring their unique style to metal by blending many elements and genre's into one record.

On September 25 "Devil's Night" was released as the first single for the album. On October 9, their second single "If It's Dead, We'll Kill It" was released.^[14] On November 13, 2012 the music video for the single Devil's Night was released. On the same day the album Infamous was released.

Infamous initially hit #53 on the Billboard 200, #19 on Top Rock Albums, #9 on Top Independent Albums, and #5 on Top Hard Rock Albums.^[2]

Motionless In White's ex-drummer, Angelo Parente, announced his departure from the band on March 11 via Tumblr, saying 'After doing this since I was 17, the nonstop touring, and everything else that comes with the life of a musician, has finally caught up with me.'. He has left the band on good terms, and there is no sign of internal rifts. Brandon Richter was announced as the replacement drummer on 23rd April 2013.

[edit] Musical style, influence and lyrics

The sound for the band's debut album, Creatures is primarily modern metalcore, with drawn-in influence from gothic, black, and industrial metal.^[15][16] The band has even been dubbed as "gothic metalcore"^[17] and "horror-metal" by Fearnet.^[18] Being influenced from a wide variety of artists such as Marilyn Manson, Slayer, It Dies Today, Twisted Sister, Misfits, Bleeding Through, Cradle of Filth, Himsa, Slipknot, Metallica, Combichrist, Psyclon Nine, Suicide Commando, August Burns Red, AFI, The Black Dahlia Murder, Rammstein, Iron Maiden, Immortal, Korn, Type O Negative, Pantera, Rob Zombie, As I Lay Dying, Stick to Your Guns, Dimmu Borgir, Every Time I Die, Soilwork, Emperor, Nine Inch Nails, Mayhem, Blink 182, Alkaline Trio, King Diamond and Eighteen Visions. Although they may not be direct influences into the bands musical style as it is you can hear references to bands in a few of their songs such as The Smiths and The Cure. In the song Puppets for example you can hear the line "I am human and I need to be loved. Just like everybody else does." which is taken from the song How soon is now? by The Smiths. Chris Cerulli can be seen wearing a Smiths t-shirt in the Puppets music video as well. The group's song structure commonly features intricate riffs coupled with occasional blast beats during verses and breakdowns present in songs. The band's keyboard effects are also noted, having been claimed to add a "dark and uneasy atmosphere" to the group's music.^[19]

The band's second album, Infamous, explores more of an industrial metal, approach, drawing sounds from the band's favourite bands such as Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, Slipknot, Rammstein, Cradle of Filth and Korn - compared to the breakdown filled metalcore effort of their debut. In an interview with Metal Hammer UK about the Infamous album, Chris Cerulli stated that although he has enjoyed working within the metalcore genre but he and the band aim to develop their sound to prevent it from sounding too generic; Infamous has been their first step forward to achieve this aim. (http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me425zca7j1r54dhjo1_1280.png) In the same article, Chris talks about the sound on "Creatures" stating that their aim was to "take the (metalcore) genre and put twists on it and re-invent what it means to be this sort of band." He also claims that the band are through with making music in the metalcore style as he calls states that "Infamous" album was to "get them out of a genre which has become repetitive monotonous bullshit."

Lyrically, Motionless in White songs usually take on concepts such as horror, heartache, insanity, religion, individualism, or surreal fiction. The single "A.M.E.R.I.C.A" from their album Infamous was meant to outline what they felt was wrong with the United States at the time the album was released.

[edit] Members

Current members

• Chris "Motionless" Cerulli - lead vocals (2005-present)
• Joshua Balz - keyboards, piano (2007-present)
• Ryan Sitkowski - lead guitar (2008-present)
• Ricky "Horror" Olson - rhythm guitar (2011-present), backing vocals (2009-present), bass guitar (2009-2011)
• Devin "Ghost" Sola - bass guitar, backing vocals (2011-present)
• Brandon Richter - drums (2013-present)

Former members

• Angelo Parente - drums (2005–2013)
• Frank Polumbo - bass guitar (2005–2009)
• Mike Costanza - guitar (2005–2008)
• Thomas "TJ" Bell - guitar, backing vocals (2007–2011)

[edit] Discography

Studio albums

• Creatures (2010, Fearless)
• Infamous (2012, Fearless)

EPs

• Motionless In White (Demo) (2005, self-released)
• The Whorror (2007, Masquerade)
• When Love Met Destruction (2009, Tragic Hero)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Motionless in White on Facebook