Pre-Pre-Production: Motionless In White
Gothic emocore outfit Motionless In White have always done fairly well without any help. Since forming in late 2006, they’ve managed to release a handful of EPs on their own and self-promote themselves into buzzworthy status within the scene. Two successful stints on Warped Tour in 2007 and 2008 helped propel MIW onto the radar of labels everywhere, and Tragic Hero released their EP, When Love Met Destruction earlier this year. Now signed to Fearless Records, the band are writing their full-length debut and find themselves in a position where there are expectations to deliver. How will they respond? LUCY ALBERS spoke with frontman CHRIS CERULLI about how LP1 is shaping up.
Where are you with the upcoming album?
We just got off a tour with A Static Lullaby which ended in California, and our next tour starts in California. So we’re currently staying with a friend in L.A. We have a portable studio and we’re just writing every day. It’s kind of hard to write on the road, so it’s nice to have this time. It basically would have taken us two days to drive home and two days to drive back, and we didn’t want to go home for a month. We just set up and started writing here rather than waste time driving. Plus, we felt like this would give us a whole different experience. We’ve never really written outside of the practice space back home. So it’s kind of a different, creative atmosphere. We’ve got about six or seven songs done. We’ll keep writing until we go into the studio. Hopefully we’ll be able to get a bunch of new songs written and pick about 12 for the full-length. We-along with our label–pushed the EP pretty hard and we felt it would be redundant to put any of those songs on our full-length. We’ll have had the EP out for about a year by the time the new record comes out, so we don’t want to push the same songs again. We’ve actually recently named the album Circus In Peril. We don’t do a lot of metaphors as a band, but this is a big one. Basically, it’s pointed towards the world and how everything is going to shit. The word “circus” is a metaphor for the world and everything we’re involved in–everything bad that makes us lose faith in humanity. I’m in no way saying we’re better than everything else, but it represents everything bad in the world and just seems to fit right now.
Do you have any plans for when you’ll record and who with?
Our label kind of gave us the idea of early spring so that we’ll have a good chance of getting on Warped Tour next year. We have a tour with Bleeding Through coming up and another one in November and December, but we’ll maybe record around January and have something released in March or April. We have an idea who we want to record with, but it’s still a little early. We haven’t sat down and talked about it, really. We’d love to work with Devin Townsend; he’s produced a lot of albums we enjoy.
How does the newer stuff you’ve been working on compare to your last EP?
We definitely don’t want to be a band who change a lot from record to record and throw kids off. We pretty much have the same ratio. We worked on the EP songs for a really long time and had more screaming because, when we started, we were a more screaming band. I think we’ll try to throw more singing in. Obviously, it’s easier for kids to understand singing and more singing will appeal to the same crowd, but it also opens us up to more people. I guess, compared to the EP, it’s definitely a step up. Everything is harder, darker and more pissed off. I feel like the EP did a good job showing the intensity of our band. With this album, we’re kind of hoping people will really understand what’s behind our band. I think it’s catchier with more singing and choruses, and it gives the kids something to hold on to and sing along to.
What can we expect lyrically?
My favorite thing in school was reading books and stuff and building a movie in my head. So half the record is like building my own movie script. It’s like you can listen to a song and see a movie in your head. It’s kind of more horror movies and scary stuff because that’s the kind of person I am. I tried to do that with the lyrics on the last EP and kind of got it, but not exactly. It’s just a step up from what we had on the EP. It puts imagery in your head, so you think “Wow, that’s crazy!,” and each person can kind of create their own individual vision. I would love to do something that isn’t exactly like a concept record, but one big story. I know people get made fun of for writing about relationships, and the word “emo” is thrown around a lot, but I couldn’t care less about that bullshit. The EP was pretty personal shit that has happened to me. I have infinite amounts of things to say and it’s kind of an in-depth look at those things. It’s extremely personal and exactly what goes through my head. There are no limits to the detail of expressing how I feel about stuff like relationships with really personal lyrics. I don’t worry about criticism. Everyone is so afraid of being criticized. If that’s what emo is, then I’m proud to be emo. I don’t think a lot of bands in our genre [open themselves up like that]. The only other band I can think of right now who do are A Day To Remember; Homesick was about being homesick. Their style of music isn’t really our thing, but it’s an honest record and it’s good. We like to push the envelope and say things other bands won’t; things that are kind of disgusting and shocking to people. I’m not afraid to be offensive and shocking.
Is there anything that you’ve been listening to in order to get inspired?
Every other band seems to listen to music that’s more poppy. A lot of stuff I write sounds kind of pissed off. So I listen to stuff that kind of counteracts that. One of my favorites is actually Morrissey. All of his songs are extremely personal and really honest. There aren’t a lot of metaphors, and I love that. It’s exactly what I would like to accomplish. I hate to read lyrics and sit there for like three hours trying to figure it out. Lyrics are the biggest thing for me.
Considering that this is your debut full-length, are you nervous?
I totally care what people think and of course I want them to like our band. I’m absolutely sweating bullets about putting an album out on a bigger label. We’ve been a band for a while, and we’ve struggled to get to this point. We know that you have to be good to succeed and I’m definitely stressing out about that. I’m sure a lot of other bands get this same thing, but I get hundreds of messages a day from kids who tell me they relate to my lyrics, or that no one else writes like I do anymore. I’ll always have that group of kids that get it. I’d rather not have more kids listen to us if it’s just because we’re popular. I want them to like us because we’re good. I’m a little nervous because we’re not the same as all the other bands, but I’m confident that we’ll still be happy with our record. alt
