I
F YOU THOUGHT THE LOST BOYS ONLY INFLUENCED THE MULLET MOVEMENT, THINK AGAIN. Chris Cerulli, frontman for Pennsylvanian screamo band Motionless In White, has the words “Lost Boys” tattooed across his knuckles and wrote the
song “We Only Come Out at Night,” from his band’s recently released debut album Creatures, in tribute to director Joel
Schumacher’s 1987 vampire classic. “[The film] pointed out, ‘This is where you belong. This is
what you’re going to be like for the rest of your life,’” Cerulli says. “It was a movie about being different and finding a home with other people you can relate to, and I identified with all of the characters in that movie. … It kind of changed my life in some small way. I felt like I belonged.” Named after a song by defunct Orange County hard rock act
Eighteen Visions, Motionless In White – which also includes gui- tarist/vocalist TJ Bell, guitarist Ryan Sitkowski, bassist Ricky Olson, keyboardist Josh Balz and drummer Angelo Parente – came together in a Scranton high school back in 2004. After landing a spot on the 2007 Vans Warped Tour, the band released two EPs, The Whorror (2007) and When Love Met Destruction (2008), before signing to Fearless Records for their full-length debut. Recorded this past May, Creatures invokes the emo-infused metal of The Devil
Wears Prada and A Day to Remember, with its double-time drums and screamed- versus-clean vocals, but injects elements of Marilyn Manson-style spooky industrial and the symphonic metal of Cradle of Filth. “When we were doing this record, I wanted it to have a really, really different feel to it, a really scary feel,” says Cerulli. “We’re pushed as this scary band and
we have this scary aura about us, but if you’ve listened to our music in the past, it’s definitely on the dark side but it’s never been scary. It’s never matched up.” Creatures, named after the sextet’s endearing term for their fans, is chock full
of horror. The aforementioned Lost Boys-influenced “We Only Come Out at Night” samples Bela Lugosi’s Dracula dialogue before launching into an arena-ready an- them sure to have black hearts dabbing at their smeared eyeliner. “London in Ter- ror” – written from the perspective of Jack the Ripper – and the Edward Scissorhands-inspired “Scissorhands (The Last Snow)” capitalize on the band’s chunky two-guitar attack, tweaking the screamo genre with spooky synthesizers remi- niscent of Orgy or Zeromancer. The album artwork depicts scores of hands emerging, zom-
bie-like, from the earth to grasp at crows, which, for Cerulli, represent the things that feed his growing anger and hatred – namely, a long-term relationship that ended badly, which has significantly contributed to his lyrics. “Some of the things that were done just really ruined me as a person,” the 24-year-old admits. “It changed who I am from
being a nice person to being a really hate-driven and bitter person, and that’s what drives a lot of my lyrics. ... The hands are grabbing at the crows. The creatures are coming.” As to Motionless In White’s appeal to horror fans, Cerulli, a regular horror con-
vention attendee, welcomes it. “I feel like our band has
this...aura that attracts people that, like Marilyn Manson,
would attract the ‘misfits’ of the crowd, the people that are willing to be different, willing to be themselves and have a mind of their own and not care what people think they look like,” he says. “Looking different and not caring about being normal and whatnot, that’s what horror is to me.”
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