Motionless in White’s Chris Motionless Ready to Step Into Festival Headliner Role

It's a big step in a band's career, but Motionless in White's Chris Motionless tells Full Metal Jackie that he's ready and motivated to headline the 2027 Bloodstock Festival next year.

In speaking with Full Metal Jackie for her weekend radio show, the Motionless in White frontman said they welcomed the opportunity and chose to build around their Bloodstock appearance in 2027 rather than Download after the festival shared their belief in the band by offering the headline spot.

"We wanted to go do that and prove them right," shared Motionless. "To be honest, [we want to] prove a lot of other people wrong and that's a cool motivating factor and we're gonna go super hard."

The singer confesses, "When you're a younger band, you're like, 'Man, if we were ever given that chance, we would put on the craziest show we possibly can' and now we get to do that. We're in the belief that when you're given this opportunity, you better spend every penny you can on putting the craziest production together and making sure that your band is as tight as possible and you are playing the right songs."

The headline spot comes at a good time as Motionless in White are promoting their Decades album, which Motionless says is "like the all-stars of Motionless in White songs come together into one album." While speaking with Full Metal Jackie, they dig into the new record and its direction, discuss social media and wrestling, talk about his songwriting and influences and Chris explains why this album was already a success for him before the record even was released.

Check out more of the chat below.

It's Full Metal Jackie and this week we welcome to the show Chris Motionless of Motionless in White. It's been quite the hot streak in recent years and it's only continuing with the new Decades album. Chris, in listening to this record, there's nods to the past, yet it feels freshly present. it's been a journey to get here, but in 2026, is this ultimately the most Motionless in White album you feel to date? Does it best describe the entirety of what you envision this band to be?

I would say yeah. in 2026, this is what the band is I think because the album is such a collection of the things that we've done before intentionally. I would have to say this is the most Motionless record. There might be a couple moments that pushed those types of elements much further into a more modern direction, but everything on there is something that we've touched on before because we wanted to have an album that was, like, so inspired by all the past elements.

So I would say it feels like the all-stars of Motionless in White songs come together into one album and we're really happy with it. I don't know if we weren't doing it with that intention how much different it would've been. But for right now, yeah, this is 2026 Motionless.

Chris, what feels like a mission statement comes in one of the first songs we heard from this album. "On every scar is a badge of a lesson I've learned / That took me 20 effing years to learn" from "Afraid of the Dark." So let's get into the album's direction. Were there certain themes you wanted to address? What essentially was the jumping-off point that guided this album?

You're the first person that's highlighted that specific line, so thank you for making me feel special about that 'cause I really loved that one.

Early on when we started working on the record, it was more of this sort of loose, let's just write some songs and see how it goes and start gathering up the material. But then once we had a better idea of what we had, it hit me. I'm like, "Wait a minute. We are coming up on 20 years of being a band here and there is such a larger narrative with that that feels... I would say every record I kinda wait for the magic moment of realization of like, "This is what it should be. This is how it should be explained and tie all together." And then once I realized we've been writing for a while, it's now coming up on 2026, this is an opportunity to take this stuff in a direction where we are saying this is what a 20-year journey for a band like us has been.

We've been through so much. We've experienced so many things on the road, in our personal lives, et cetera. Let's take all of that and put it into one record. Let's talk about our relationship with the fans, our relationship with music, our relationship with each other, our personal relationships, everything that we've been through in 20 years.

And once that sort of spark went off, everything just started coming together. It was immediately like, "Yes, this song should be like this. This song should do that." And it felt really good to have a clear direction once you saw the future of what it could've been.

Motionless in White, "Afraid of the Dark"

Chris, at 20 years into a career, social media might not have been at its peak yet, but was beginning to be part of a component for getting your name out there when you first started. We've seen over the past two decades how that's informed how we interact as a society. How has it been used to dictate public conversation? Some of that comes into play in "Playing God," your song with Corey Taylor. It's obviously coming from a place of frustration, but how do you personally feel about social media in 2026? Is there still a good that can come from it, or are there things we can do to change it for the better?

Absolutely. I do think that at its core it's very well-intended. It's meant to connect people. It's meant to give everybody a chance to be heard, to be seen and I think at its core it's a positive thing. It's just that unfortunately there are people that are... they take advantage of that system and they utilize it for various versions of attention or destruction and divisiveness and division.

It's just what happens with any good thing in this world. You will have the bad apples that ruin it. I think for a lot of people that are in the public eye, like a band or an artist or obviously you probably deal with this a lot as well, where you're putting yourself and your personality, your character out there and then people want to criticize that in ways that is so full of opinion and misinformation and only ill intention.

That's the divide for me, where I just can't understand why people utilize these things that could connect us and could create such cool artistic value and make it about such selfishness and such self-absorption. That's where "Playing God" comes in.

I have a lot of positive stuff to say, but unfortunately I'm a person that's very driven by anger, and I needed to share my piece of that on the album as I have in every album. That's kind of a through line of a vibe that goes through our songs on multiple albums.

Motionless In White Featuring Corey Taylor, "Playing God"

A lot of fans likely perked up upon hearing "Fight Like Hell" off the new record, seemingly being a nod to your past collab with wrestler, Rhea Ripley. It's always cool to see your music find new audiences. What was your initial response seeing your music used in the wrestling world and the response it was getting? Have you been a fan of wrestling and how has that evolved into the years since you first did Rhea's walkout track to now with "Fight Like Hell"?

Yeah. it's still such a larger than life thing to think about. I grew up in the '90s where The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels and WWF were one of the biggest things in school. Everybody was talking about those wrestlers and Hulk Hogan and I was really into it as a kid. And then as I got into music and skateboarding and stuff like that, I fell away from it.

Now this newer generation of wrestlers have what I think is something that I liked a lot about it when I was a kid, which is that they have these bigger, huge storyline characters that have these larger than life personalities. That, I think, is what that wrestling is about. It's a big theatrical drama presentation and Rhea is definitely a person that, of course, we resonate with because she's a metal fan and a rock fan. She looks like she could be in a band.

It's just been really awesome to see that she has been a person that has really brought rock and metal to the forefront of the music side of that whole organization. And we're very lucky and appreciative that she likes our band and we love her and are huge fans. So this "Fight Like Hell" song was a really cool moment for us to celebrate her in return for everything that she's done for us.

Motionless in White, "Fight Like Hell"

Chris, one of the great things with this band is that it's felt like a natural upward trajectory your career has been on since you first started. It feels like it's always a learning experience. There's not any complacency. Looking back at your career, during which album cycle do you feel like you took the biggest step forward as an artist? And also, what's been the most challenging aspect for you to improve upon - the singing, the songwriting or finding the sound?

Man, these are just very, very good questions. We could turn this into a podcast, but I wanna try to be more concise. To be honest, the biggest leap forward that we took was back in 2012.

We put out an album called Infamous, and at that point, we were mostly just a heavy screaming metalcore band. We didn't really have anything that could be put on the radio. We didn't have a lot of "singing first" type of songs. And I think at that point, we were just like, "We don't want to just be one thing. We love so many styles of music."

We love so many bands and artists that influence us. Why are we gonna stay in this box when we can just do everything? And I don't think that we were ready or prepared for what the fanbase would've thought of that because a lot of fans like  to stay in the lane that they love most that you do.

So when we put the record out, it was very poorly received at first, but then those songs that were a progression into more expansive sounds or more singing slowly caught on with other people and it kinda helped pull us out of that hole. It gave us the confidence to be able to do every version of what we like going forward. So that was a pretty pivotal moment that we feel extremely lucky to have made it out of.

And then I would say to answer your next question or the other half of your question, for me, personally, of course, it's been really becoming a singer rather than a musician.

I started wanting to be in a band because I love playing drums and guitar and I wasn't originally wanting to be a singer, but that's just sort of where life took me. And it's been a very, very, very long journey to learn how to be a better singer, both live and on our records.

I still have so much to learn and left to go. But I do feel proud of myself for realizing, "Hey, you gotta put the guitar down and actually sing if you're gonna be a singer." And that was another really pivotal moment that I think took place on our Graveyard Shift album onward.

Chris, as a writer, who are some of the people you're most inspired by, whether it be in music or other forms of expression? And I have a second question. What's the favorite lyric that you've ever written?

That's a good one. I love a lot of different styles, influences and artists, et cetera. Your favorite bands have the stuff that really resonated with you. One of my favorite singers or my favorite singer is Ben from Breaking Ben. I think that's rather obvious and I think everything that Breaking Ben does is like they can do no wrong. The melodies are just insane. The vocals are so perfect. The music... Everything about the band just hits me. But I also think that might be because I've seen them since before they even released Saturate. They're from just my area. So I have this personal connection with them that really inspired me.

That kind of goes for my other favorite bands in the other genres, too. Bands that were able to really say what I was feeling and I didn't know how or didn't know how to write the music to have as that device to vent and have that outlet.

So there's bands like Bleeding Through or the band that we're named after, one of their songs, "18 Visions." Like, all the heavier metalcore bands from back in the 2000s. Or you have Slipknot. Corey Taylor is on one of our songs because he's one of our biggest collective influences.

And Corey is never afraid to be as angry as you can imagine a person being, and that spoke a lot to the part of me that was just so full of rage and wanted to write music like that. I found a person that was saying so many things about familiar things that I felt as growing up.

READ MORE: Motionless in White Members Visit Haunted 'Paranormal Prison'

Favorite lyric. I think I'm always gonna end up going back to, "If you mean it, you will make it," [from "570" and repeated in "Afraid of the Dark"] because it surely does feel like that is just our story, you know? We have meant it every day.

We still, to this day, go out there and want to make sure that we do not project the image that we have taken this for granted. We are so grateful to be here every day, growing, living out our dream and we really mean that. And I think that that's a key to our success is that people recognize that, that there's so much heart and soul in the band. So that's my favorite lyric.

Chris, this year brings us the Sweat and Blood Headline Tour with a who's who of great bands. Now being in the headline spot, what experiences are you looking for with those other acts? Like, did you learn from someone coming up through the ranks, and do you pass things down or try to present a certain vibe in how you interact with these other bands?

I think the cool thing is, thankfully for both of these these legs of these tours, most of these bands are bands that are our friends that we've toured with in various ways before. So it feels like a big summer camp. You're hanging out with your friends.

But our tours, we wanna do or we wanna create a space where everyone just feels welcomed and appreciated. We're not the type of headliner that's gonna bring out this amount of people on our own and these bands have done so much work on their own to bring these fans to these shows and give these fans a full package and we want them to know that they're appreciated for that.

I wouldn't say I'm the type of guy to walk around thinking I have all this wisdom to bestow on the younger bands. If they ask, I'll you know. Dark Divine is definitely a band that is following in our footsteps and I've had conversations with them on advice or things that they could do that we did that might have helped.

So it's awesome. I think it's fun to be the veteran now, where I can try to offer any help or advice on what worked for us and what could work for them. But it's not something I just walk around being like, "If anybody needs me, I'll be over here and come ask whatever you want."

Chris, there are certain milestone moments in a band's career. I saw recently that Bloodstock has named Motionless in White as one of their 2027 headliners. What does it mean to have reached that point in your career where you're closing out festivals? And does this provide you the opportunity to do the Motionless in White show you've always wanted?

Yeah, that's been something that it's always the case when you're a younger band. You're like, "Man, if we were ever given that chance, we would put on the craziest show we possibly can" and now we get to do that.

We're in the belief that when you're given this opportunity, you better spend every penny you can on putting the craziest production together and making sure that your band is as tight as possible and you are playing the right songs. So to have that now equate to we're about to go headline our first European festival, we're gonna go so hard and do everything that we can to bring what we can typically only do in America over to the U.K.

The reason why we chose to do that show instead of Download, which is earlier in the summer, is because we wanted to give back to the people that were believing in us. They thought that we were a headliner. We wanted to go do that and prove them right. To be honest, [we want to] prove a lot of other people wrong and that's a cool motivating factor and we're gonna go super hard.

Chris, 'm asking this 'cause I love your cover, but "Sunglasses at Night" came out in 1983. You weren't even born until few years later. So what was your introduction to that song growing up and what's your attachment to it? Why has that been, the song you long wanted to cover?

Of course would be too young to remember the first couple times I heard it. But I think as I started to kind of realize music or styles of music and how to categorize the styles of music in my mind through experience with listening, that song to me has all of the elements of what I felt like affected me most about '80s music.

I love, as you can clearly hear in our music, synth-based, electronic-based stuff. It's always been a big thing that's affected me. As time went on, that song has always just been what I feel like is the perfect, quintessential, cool, swaggery, awesome '80s attitude song.

There's lot of other great, great songs, like the "You Spin Me Right Round." I love that one. Like, there's so many other great '80s songs that ... I mean, just pop on The Wedding Singer movie and you'll hear all of them. But, that one just has some extra special magic to it that excited me.

And then when it was like, "Oh, we're a band. We can cover songs," I was like, "Well, what band would I do from each genre o music or from each year of music?" And that one was like, "Oh, man. That would be such a cool song to do." And then that kind of fire got hotter and hotter and it was like, "I have to do this. This is the perfect song."

It's like it's not a goth song or anything, but it has this thing that I feel like a band like Motionless should do this song rather than like... I can't imagine... We talked about Breaking Benjamin earlier. I can't imagine Breaking Benjamin covering "Sunglasses at Night," but I can hear a band that looks like us and feels like our energy covering a song that feels like it pairs with that.

So think I just saw what I thought was an opportunity to do something cool that I loved, and it wasn't even meant to go on our album and it did, and I'm so stoked, and it's my favorite song to play live now.

Motionless in White, "Sunglasses at Night"

We've been talking about the new record, Decades, and I'll finish with an open-ended question for you to give an answer to. In your opinion, the Decades album is a success in your mind if "blank" happens. What ultimately makes this record something you reflect on fondly? And are we already there or has something yet to be achieved?

Well, the funniest answer I have to give is that I think one song on that record before the album even came out already gave me that exact sense of like, wow, we did it. We released "Afraid of the Dark" in January, and seeing how much that song has affected people and how much they felt...

When writing it, there was every bit of heart and soul that we could put into a song is in that song. If you were to ask me what is the Motionless song that represents our band as an entire whole, everything about the band, it's that song. So when I saw the reaction to it that people were feeling the same way I was when writing it, they were connecting to all these different parts of the song, lyrics, it felt like for the first time that we were ever truly seen or that I was ever seen as a person by even people who don't like the band.

They might not have loved the song, but they were like, "Yeah, I can, I can understand why this song is, is going off." And I think when you're an artist, there's a lot of misinterpretation. There's a lot of people taking your lyrics in ways that maybe you didn't intend it, for better or worse.

But that song was like everybody heard it the same way, and I felt seen as a person, not an artist, and that is like... I don't know if I'll ever be able to beat that. It's a weird feeling to be like, wow, I'm not sure that I will ever surpass that moment in our career going forward, but I don't even care 'cause, you know, that's as good as it could have ever been.

Thanks to Motionless in White's Chris Motionless for the interview. 'Decades' is available now. You can stay up to date on all of the band's activities via their website, Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie's weekend radio show here.

Below, take a look at 40 rock and metal bands that share their name with the song title of another band.