Backstage scraps, lost voices and zombie apocalypses… Motionless In White have experienced a wild 20-year ride, and Chris Motionless has the stories to prove it.
From battle of the bands at county fairs to headlining their own festival, for the past two decades Scranton savages Motionless In White have been constantly stepping their game up. Ahead of a sold-out UK tour where Chris Motionless promises to “go harder than we ever have”, the frontman reflects on the shows that got them to the top of the metalcore mountain…
“That was our first show with the members that became Motionless In White a few months later. It was a battle of the bands at [Northeast Fair in Pittston, Pennsylvania], and we did half originals and half covers. It got stopped in the middle of the performance because of rain. We got up there so excited, and within two songs it starts pouring, then got to go back up and do two more. It was not the most glamorous show that a band wants, and I think we came in third place, but it felt so cool to be up there with my friends playing songs that we wrote together. The funny thing is, we played the same fair the very next day and changed our band name overnight. The first day we were called One Way Ticket, and then overnight we changed our name to Maybe Next Time. It was so fucking bad (laughs). That was a really heavy period of discovery for us. We were just kids so excited to be onstage, headbanging and scaring the hell out of people.”
“Every year, the company Ernie Ball had a contest where fans vote for you to be one of the four bands that open up that stage every day. We tried so hard to get everybody that we knew to vote for us and we ended up being the first or second band on that day. It was so amazing to roll up to the parking lot of Warped Tour and unpack our shit from the back of a truck and wheel it across gravel for a mile… Every rite of passage moment of Warped Tour we got on that first-ever thing! We even had our own merch booth with a banner design we had to print on separate bits of paper and laminate them all together. My dad still has it in his garage! We were definitely that young band that was like, ‘We’re a real band now, we’re on Warped Tour,’ and it’s hilarious to think back to. It was such a huge moment and we wanted to do it like the real bands were.”
“We were on tour with Alesana and it routed through a venue in Scranton called Tink’s. After the show, our drummer’s parents brought catering for all the bands. They owned an Italian restaurant and brought all this amazing food. After the show was over we all went upstairs to start eating and these eight huge security guards came in the room – they were all cops – and were like, ‘Get the fuck out!’ We were like, ‘Why? We’re about to eat and hang out…’ One of the cops pushed one of the singers from Alesana and it turned into a full-blown brawl. It was three bands’ worth of dudes fighting eight big cop dudes. It was people on top of each other. Our keyboard player got a chunk of his hair ripped out. It was crazy. Obviously we got kicked out but it was so cool – ‘We’re not gonna take this bullshit. You’re only pushing us around because we look weird and you don’t want us here because you’re assholes.’ It was so symbolic to the spirit of the tour and not taking any shit for being different.”
“We did our first UK and Europe tour with Blessthefall and Pierce The Veil, and it was hard to juggle what was more important – we were there to do shows, but we were so excited to be travelling in a new place. When we got to London, that show was the best of the whole tour because it was one of the only shows where people gave a fuck about us. We played in Germany and there was probably 15 people there when we were onstage, and all of them were vividly laughing at us. Admittedly, it was probably our worst performance of the whole tour, but they were laughing, pointing, talking shit… it was embarrassing and one of the worst shows we’ve ever played. But we went from opening the small room in that venue to playing the second room in 2014, and then went back in 2019 and sold out the biggest room headlining. That was such a huge moment to look back and see the progress of the band in Europe.”
“The show at Camden Underworld is still in the top three craziest shows we’ve ever done. The day before, I got probably the most sick I’ve ever been in my life. I lost my voice, so I had to address the crowd like, ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t have any voice to sing, but we’re gonna play the show and it’ll be what it’s gonna be,’ and everybody just filled in those gaps. I was in the front and people were singing the words. Those tight, sweaty, packed, in-your-face moments are what I live for. That is as good as it gets. I hate barricades, I hate the distance. At The Underworld, I was literally forehead to forehead with kids screaming the words, jumping on my back, it was like what you see at hardcore shows. The energy in that room could have filled fuckin’ Wembley, and it was just something I’ve held onto forever.”
“I don’t know if everyone associates Download with mud and rain and the misery that is the weather, but it was everything we were ever told it was. I would have felt weird if it was a beautiful day – I wanted the experience. Seeing that tent fill up before we went on felt like a moment of legitimising the band in a festival sense. At that point we weren’t doing many festivals at the level of Download, and it was exactly what I wanted it to be. The main memory I have is embarrassing because we had this song called America and instead of singing ‘A-M-E-R-I-C-A’ I had the crowd sing ‘E-N-G-L-A-N-D’ and it did not go over well. It was very confusing, and people were like, ‘I’m not fuckin’ vibing with this.’ The rest of the show was great, but the person that I am cannot let go of those moments. It’s one of those things you think about when you’re going to bed 10 years later…”
“We were supporting Asking Alexandria, and at every show, there were hundreds of fans outside of the hotels. Every single one wanted a signature or a picture, but the crazy thing is, when we rolled up to the venues, it was like a zombie apocalypse movie. The swarm of people surrounded the bus entirely. As each of us got out, fans were pulling and grabbing everything they could. It was seriously like we were the fucking Beatles. It was one of the most mass hysteria-type moments I’ve ever had. They wanted everything they could grab from you, whether it was your hair, shirt, backpack and it was like I was living in a dream-slash-nightmare… I’m just the singer of Motionless In White, I’m not fuckin’ Paul McCartney! That’s the most extreme thing we’ve ever experienced. The next time we went to Brazil, I stepped out of the bus and gave myself over the crowd, and they just carried me. It was nuts.”
“That was such a fun tour to be on and do a ton of venues that felt so big and exciting after the pandemic. It was so cool to see that heavy music and hard rock – especially the darker side – has a space and is being encouraged, and so many people were enthusiastic about it. It was all three bands [MIW, Ice Nine Kills and Black Veil Brides] recognising the opportunity in front of us and seizing that moment. The pandemic was so heavy and that’s what I think most about that tour. How do all of our bands come back after all this time, and just punch everybody in the fucking jaw? Let’s do it together. That was the meaning behind it. There was so much excitement around getting back out there that you could have broken my legs two seconds before going onstage and I would have crawled my ass out there and played (laughs). Live shows are where the heart and soul of our band lives.”
“We saw a lot of bands were doing their own festival and we thought, ‘Why don’t we make it an annual home thing and help the scene in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre?’ When I was growing up there was a gigantic music scene, and it just fizzled out and died. So it was a hometown pride thing. [We wanted] to do something that was more than a show. There’s a lot of differing opinions on what makes a festival, but I think if it’s an event that’s beyond just a show then it’s acceptable to call it that. We collided two-and-a-half tours’ worth of bands together and gave fans something to do all day. At the one we just did [in October/November] we gave fans something to do for two days in a row. That’s what I love about it the most. There were tons of fans that came from all over the world to be at Apocalypse Fest, and seeing people travel in to see their favourite band and meet their internet friends was so cool to me.”
“I was so nervous, because that’s one of the few things I haven’t ever experienced in the 20 years I’ve been doing this – walking into something and everywhere you turn is something so massively bigger than you and anything you’ve ever done. I’ve seen some of these people on TV since I was a kid, and having Triple H in my face like, ‘Yeah, this is fucking great, let’s have you come over here and get Rhea [Ripley] to do this and that…’ Just go back and tell 12-year-old me that this is going to happen. WWE really recognise the importance of metal, and it’s so cool that it ties in and melds with it so well and gives people something to be so excited about. The picture of me and Rhea face-to-face and singing with each other is in the top five coolest moments of my life. I’m so grateful for that.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2024 issue of the magazine. Motionless In White tour the UK from February 18.
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