Motionless in White have the commendable quality of a stadium-headlining band playing a 2,000-capacity theatre. Formed almost 20 years ago in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the metalcore five-piece lay it on thick from the off, with dancing girls, pyrotechnics and a wall of Blade Runner visuals to match the colossal riffs of recent single Meltdown. Lead vocalist Chris “Motionless” Cerulli is darkly handsome in a sleek black coat, incongruously low-key compared to his corpse paint-wearing bandmates. But his goth smarts against the cartoonish metal surroundings are a neat analogue for the band’s sound: classic metalcore with a glam, gothic edge.
He may be relatively unshowy, but Cerulli’s impressively malleable voice carries the show’s emotional and musical surges. Another Life allows him to embrace post-hardcore melodrama, and ballad Masterpiece is arguably his best showcase, as he switches from a soaring emo chorus to a snarling breakdown. Hardcore ripper Slaughterhouse ignites pure carnage in the pit, even if the guest vocals from Fit for a King’s Ryan Kirby aren’t as gnarly as those on the recording, by Bryan Garris of hardcore heroes Knocked Loose.
