TW// brief mentions of attempted suicide, suicidal ideation, PTSD
When it comes to describing albums, singles, or EPs; the titles on my reviews will never lie. Dominating the charts ever since 2005, Heavy Metal Titans out of Scranton, PA, Motionless in White, have released a next-level welcome to the age of judgment anthemic trail of songs, Scoring the End of the World. A collection of songs that are so strategically placed together that it is simply incomprehensible for the fans to choose a favorite. This thirteen-tracked package of dynamite can make you wait in anguish for adrenaline to build and then BOOM it will hit you square upside the head and make you want to rock. – DO NOT SLEEP ON THIS ALBUM! For me, every song here has a star-studded personality of its own. We are diving into the very depth of every sensation that a consumer could have, and I have personally been looking forward to this album’s release ever since they first announced it. Let us dive into the actual review!
Track 1 – Meltdown
We open the album with “Meltdown” as the first track and already you feel as if you are strapped into a rocket and waiting to blast off. Chris Motionless lets out the iconic “BLEGH!” with the whole band thundering in all at once before he says “GO!” If Thrash Metal Titans Metallica and German Power Metal Icons Powerwolf ever wrote a song together and sped it up for the metalcore genre, it would be Motionless in White’s "Meltdown." This song is a literal blast of an opener and it demands absolute authority over the rest of this track list. Chris is an incredible lyricist in the metalcore scene, and one of the lines of this song “Everybody’s dancing on the ashes until the end of time” to me talks about the world we live in now. We are living in a world where there is a lot of chaos and a lot of conflicts, so he is narrating what he sees. This track is an animal that stands up all on its own, and to me should have honest to goodness been a single for this LP because when I say the band came out with all guns blazing and then made it sound like it was recorded in a damn warzone, that is a knockdown drag out understatement for me as a fan. My word for this track because of the introduction is “brain-melting.”
Track 2 – Sign of Life
This song got my attention immediately just by the title alone. I have got to give the band a huge credit because the instrumental of this track is otherworldly, and that is putting it lightly. Instrumentally they are mirroring the way that I feel. Lyrically, Chris is speaking about being backstabbed and betrayed with the line “It’s starting again because I let you in, the seed has sown. Create to condemn, replace to relive, despite its growth.” When you deal with people that you love repetitively and always agree to help them but expect different results, that is what creates the tone of this song. I have had former friends and now relatives that we don’t speak with anymore because of being burned this way. It is a hard lesson to learn, but we have got to stop overextending ourselves for the sake of others and learn how to preserve ourselves for the betterment of who we are as individuals. I have had three so-called friends in my life that betrayed me over the years, and all three were local, so I am now afraid to make any new friends in person unless I am at a concert and am speaking with other people who are there because I am afraid of being burned. I have Autism, and that is why I must fight harder than most to claim my personal “Sign of Life,” therefore I am finally starting to get there by being in college for International Business Management under the Bachelor of Business Administration. This song has a commanding type of presence overall, and so my word for this track based on its tone is “harrowing.”
Track 3 – Werewolf
Now it is dark outside and the environment has changed for this album. Open the castle gates and you shall see the primal altar as this track comes howling toward its very own Blood Moon. Chris goes in a darker direction for these lyrics as it deals with the primality of us humans. This track already gives me the straight chills because I already love the Gothic direction that he took which is an opposite contrast to the first two opening songs. In his first line, “I can feel you I can hear you howling in my bones; There’s an evil lurking in the dark,” he is relating people across the globe to packs of wolves, and that is what we are. If we go back to a movie like “Underworld” where it was Vampires vs. Werewolves, we can see on the Werewolf side that they start out like us humans and then they transform into beasts. Unfortunately, because the media nowadays loves to release a lot of propaganda worldwide, we are taking sides because they don’t tell us the whole story and therefore we become the Werewolves, constantly going against each other while whoever controls the media and news reports are Vampires. We are constantly at war with one another instead of uniting as one to fight against the true enemy which is what they want us to do. This is a warning of what is to come if we do not take back everything that we have left. It is a call to arms for us to recognize what we have in common instead of fighting over our differences before we let our primality consume us to the point of no return. My word for this track is “bloodthirsty.”
Track 4 – Porcelain
Straight up, this song is a whole different vibe. It is anthemic melodically, but sad lyrically. The chorus, “God knows I tried but broken I bow to the beast inside. Covered my tracks but couldn’t swallow my pride; As sure as the moonlight strikes our skin, I howled a wrecking ball, and you were Porcelain,” talks about what a tragedy it is to be a warrior through everything in public, but constantly battle with yourself in private when you are low and in darkness. For me, I was led to the brink of suicide due to bullying, and if not for lyrics like that to make sure that I did not feel alone and was not drowning alive due to my demons trying to come after me then I would not have made it here today. Music still saves me as a fan on a daily no matter what the genre, and this is a track that brings the whole thing home; It’s meant to be sad and yet hopeful. This track is like the band is saying “It’s okay to scream or cry, we will always be here,” and that is something I genuinely appreciate. When you are low, and you think you cannot find any grain of light whatsoever then go to this song because it is going to give you room to release those demons and then rise from the ashes. As a warrior, you have fallen, been broken, been betrayed, and been outnumbered, but you are still here, and you are here for a reason. Motionless in White is a band that prides itself on their fans and they preach this to the audience. You are not what people say that you claim to be and you are not what you went through; you are what you fight to become. My word for this track is “invigorating.”
Track 5 – Slaughterhouse ft. Bryan Garris
Right now, I am addressing the members of Motionless in White. You guys can officially abandon the Slaughterhouse because y’all just committed a theatrical massacre from the get-go on this one, and that is meant to be a compliment. I envision myself in a forest at night and being chased by a serial killer. For those of you who have not heard this, the amount of energy that they have on it is monstrous. If you were to live on top of a mountain that was a sleeping volcano and then it erupted suddenly, this song would be your anthem to try and get the hell out of there. Instrumentally, it has some of the crunchiest melodic twists that I have ever heard. The opening line screams out “Break down the wall again!” and to me, it is an absolute battle cry. The vocal work on this anthem is immense and it is by my standard, golden. Going from screaming by one vocalist to cleans by another tells a story. One side is animalistic and the other side is trying to reason. It goes to show when you have someone who does not listen to you or your wisdom that is a narcissist, they try to blame you for their mistakes even though you are rational. You cannot reason with these people because all that they know how to do is fight, be it physically or verbally, and I have had major issues with those kinds of people as well. This epic storyline is going to go down in history and because of the band’s work, they have themselves a newly found fan. My word to describe the primality of this track would be “jawbreaking.”
Track 6 – Masterpiece
I was part of the YouTube chat during Motionless in White’s video premiere for this song, and the first time I heard it, I cried. This song talks about how when you recognize that you’ve hurt someone, you feel like you are a failure because of it. I have felt that way so many times and am friends with so many that I cannot travel to meet with just yet and it hurts me, making me feel like I failed them because I made a verbal promise that I would. The amount of anguish coming from that is so painful and Chris illustrates it beautifully by combining the sadness and anger with fire in the video. His opening verse “All the stupid lies and the stupid games left a vacancy in this picture frame. A prisoner of my own hands, cause if I can’t have me then no one can,” illustrates that he is in a psychological battle of having caused physical or emotional pain to someone else and now he is down on himself because of the remorse that he feels over that. The second verse “I need to heal what I inflict, but I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it. As I play roulette with a broken gun, I confess these sins with a sharp and spiteful tongue,” talks about how he realizes the pain he’s caused and is in a depression now where it requires him to confess what he has done wrong to whomever it is. The chorus “So how do I apologize, and put the tears back in your eyes? When every canvas that I paint, is a Masterpiece made of my mistakes,” is what I relate to when I feel like I have failed someone in a certain way I can’t articulate why and because of this, I feel inadequate. My description for this track is “poignant.”
Track 7 – Cause of Death
“Nemesis, my dearly neurotic, enemies though our face is the same. Your greedy hands held my happiness hostage, I will carry you to the grave! Nemesis this time I’ll finish it! Break me down over and over, Blood for Blood, I’ll cut you out with the knife you cowardly left in my back! Never again, I’d rather die than keep you alive!” This is something that you would be writing to a sworn enemy of yours because they have backed out on what you wanted to do so many times and have denied you of so many opportunities that you are downright finished with their crap. The chorus goes, “Do you believe in me now? Laugh as I lower you down, no funeral no condolences. You shot our plot full of holes and nailed our twin casket closed, I found my life in your cause of death.” How many of us have had people in our lives who caused us to suffer in that sense to the point where we didn’t start living till they were gone because they gave us a sense of fear? This is the way that I feel. I have a relative who inflicted trauma upon me that I feel this way about. I will not be able to live to the fullest until this individual is underground because of the pain that he has caused me to have next to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The situation that I am just now getting over having nightmares from, and for me, this is a song of healing because Chris just wrote the lyrics that caused me to cry out after having bottled up everything that built in me. This song just gave me back the inner voice that I thought I lost forever. My word for this track is “alleviating.”
Track 8 – We Become The Night
In the opening of this song, “The rich get richer, while the sick get sicker. The profits from the people feed the poor another needle, the flames get bigger while the moths all shiver. They’re subsidizing evil with no budget for a sequel. The Prozacs gift wrapped with a smile, the cash grab never goes out of style. Your flashbacks giving you a panic attack when your eyes go pitch black,” talks about how you are in an altered state of mind, very much like a drug addict. All that you think about is the fix, and you have no regard for the ones you hurt that stand in the way of it. I have been of personal witness to this with a few extended family members that I don't speak with for this very reason; because they have become thieves and if they had a song then this one right here would be for them. The chorus, “We become the night where hope survives, we embrace the shadow following behind. So come alive and take back your soul while we become the night,” talks about if you met a dealer that had been selling for a while and you were just starting addiction, that would be his warning to you. I have heard stories of this kind of thing happening where teens who started to get addicted ran into dealers who would try to counsel them and say, “You are killing yourself and need to change before you become a criminal and have to fight for the fix.” Chris is giving a voice to those who have achieved sobriety and they’ve defeated their chance of dying from addiction. My description for this track would be “compelling.”
Track 9 – Burned At Both Ends II
This track comes in as a complete contrast and it is incredibly haunting when the guitar comes in. The opening verse goes, “I still feel you crawling under my skin, you left a certain kind of sick that I can’t let go of. I’m thinking back to all the time that I’ve wasted, I’m afraid that it’s only leading me to darker places.” At only 24 as an Autistic woman, I have a lot of people asking if I am open to dating in person. I am torn about this because yes, I want to be open to it, but no I don’t. The reason I am conflicted is that I know there are guys out there nowadays who seem like they hit all the right answers to women’s questions and then they turn dangerous. Therefore, I avoid trying to date in person altogether because I do not trust my intuition enough to know who is good or evil anymore and that scares me. There are certain people whom I won’t be able to realize their true intentions. I am burned at both ends because on one side I am now afraid of anything in person when it comes to a relationship. I have my immediate family telling me that online dating is not and will never be legitimate in my case. The band communicates this conflicting energy very well in the song and Chris has an ingenious way of narrating the pain that comes along with not knowing what to do when you are in a situation that calls for you to decide. My word for this track is “elusive.”
Track 10 – B.F.B.T.G.: Corpse Nation
Right off the bat, “Look into the darkness web of crooked thoughts. Lobotomized and left to rot feed into the promise, Worship every drop, deny it when the pageant drops,” talks about how you don’t know people, and to make friends with someone whom you are not familiar with can get dangerous because you do not know if they are all there or if they could at any point become unhinged and go against you. These lyrics are thought-provoking, and in my case, it warns me to listen to my inner instinct because I don’t know who people are. It’s one thing when someone like this starts as a stranger, but it is a whole different kind of dark when the one that you fear is a relative that was supposed to protect you. This is a song that rings the warning bell for those of us who have been exposed to these kinds of people in our own families, and therefore need to work twice as hard to make sure that our inner voices are working correctly. As women, we are too nice a lot of the time, and this is something that can get us into trouble because we don’t know how to say “no” since we are so worried about being offensive. It is perfectly okay to be selfish when you are trying to protect yourself, and that’s something we fail at. Chris is lyrically getting into the mind of the victim after having been abused. My description for this track is “cautionary.”
Track 11 – Cyberhex ft. Lindsay Schoolcraft
If there was a track to jam out with while you are strapped in a damn virtual reality type of roller coaster on the album, this would be the track to do that with! If Tron and The Matrix had a theme song, this is the one they would both be fighting over. The lyrics build into a storyline where Chris narrates as the main character while running away from people who are chasing after him. Motionless In White’s own Ricky Olson directed the music video. “Oh; There's no tomorrow, life is but an echo. Scars become mementos; This is war (war). Extinction, ashes on your pale skin; Love becomes a symptom of the cure,” lyrically sounds like it conflicts that to have peace we must have war. I can connect to these words because I have several in my family who served in the military on various branches and now I want to start an entire organization that honors troops from worldwide one day. Our veterans are subjected to playing cat and mouse by being on the streets. Quite a few of them are homeless right now because of having PTSD, and therefore not able to hold down a job after their time at war. We need to invest in their care on every level and “Cyberhex” is a call to arms where we need to act. The band is writing about a very real issue and it needs to be addressed by us. The members of our military sacrificed everything to risk their lives for us and our country, and it is past time to stand up by pledging to give back to them. My word for the tone of this track would be “futuristic.”
[PHOTOSENSITIVITY WARNING]
Track 12 – Red, White & Boom ft. Caleb Shomo
Straight out of the gate, this song opens with the chorus which I will quote in a minute. The opening verse says “You can’t come up for air when you’re living on a dime, the truth is all around us if you read between the crimes. We ride the wheel of misfortune just like a carousel; We each are our own Devil, and we make this world our Hell.” These are hands down some of the greatest lyrics that I have heard to describe what is going on today. The band is in tune with the way that those who are poverty-stricken commit the most crimes and because we have a vicious cycle that is between being in poverty and being overworked, that is our wheel of misfortune. The last line emphasizes the fact that our higher-ups are not interested in making the change for us and that is why this world becomes our Hell because, between politics and the media, they are trying to pin us all in a division against each other. The chorus “Cold and Isolated! Sold out violated! Overstimulated – So run for your life or Detonate it! Red, White, Boom, I can’t hear you! Red, White, Boom!” is a handwritten patriotic firework display. Everybody needs to get this album and blast the hell out of this track for an anthemic battle cry that can be heard from one side of this country to the other. This is my favorite one on the album so far because the lyrics are telling us the truth about why we are the way that we are when it comes to not acting on the change we speak of wanting to see. My word for this track is “prolific.”
Track 13 – Scoring The End Of The World ft. Mick Gordon
We have finally made it to the last track of this album. Before the music even gets started, the band has already put out a warning about flashing imagery. The lyric video has an incredibly celestial kind of theme filled with stars and planets. I was expecting this track to be like “Slaughterhouse,” but the band knows how to create tracks with their own identities in the same way that we as people have different names. “Long live our symphony, in infamy, our dissonance returns. We score the final scene, adrenaline now coursing through our veins,” speaks about the fact that no matter how prepared we are for it to happen we are still left in shock from the terror of that situation. I can give an example of when I watched “The Hurt Locker” for my film appreciation class, one of the main sergeants had to find a terrorist on the battlefield and figure out how to disarm a bomb that he set in the city where that sergeant’s troops were at. The last track of the album resonates with me because I have felt like it was the end of the world in my own life several different times and I must step back and remember that anything negative that happens to me is a stepping stone to something better. This last track is groundbreaking because there is a certain darkness that comes with having to prepare for a certain event that is coming up. I am on board and am a proud owner of this album. My description of this monstrous track is “apocalyptic” because the way that they delivered it was completely monumental. The album itself is a conceptual masterpiece that can in no way be tamed down.
[PHOTOSENSITIVITY WARNING]
This has been my longest review to date for any album period, and it is the first time that I can mentally visualize the themes of every song in one piece. This album tells a story, and it is one of the most bombastic highlights of 2022. When most bands make an album, there are at least some skippable songs. The members of Motionless In White have bent over backward to pull out all the stops and while I have not been a fan of theirs since they started, I have heard a few of their previous tracks on my own and this current album is a different animal. This is not something like a side salad or a granola bar. No, they made sure to have an all-you-can-eat buffet on this album! If you have read my review until the end then thank you, I know that I had a lot to say and it is rare for me to quote lyrics for every single track on an album, but it had to be done because of the poetry that this album brings to the table is stellar beyond words. If you are in Oklahoma and you are going to this year’s 15th anniversary ROK lineup for Rocklahoma Festival in Pryor, OK then I might want to meet over there! Do not miss your chance to see the entire Trinity of Terror on the Rocklahoma stage! The Festival is starting on September 2nd and ending on September 4th. Among other bands, you will have Bad Omens, In This Moment, Korn, Megadeth, Seether, Shinedown, Evanescence, and more. Scoring The End Of The World is now available on all streaming platforms as of June 10th.
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