Favourite Song: Black Damask by Motionless in White

Short post today, but I just wanted to take a few minutes and share one of my all time favourite songs. It’s called Black Damask by a band called Motionless in White. I discovered these guys when they were announced as an opening band on a tour for another band I like, and I thought if I was going to go to the show, I should learn a few songs by this “other band.” Little did I know, they would end up becoming one of my top three favourite bands, and would stay that way.

I saw them for the first time on Warped Tour 2011, at 9pm, on some tiny, random stage with about 50 other people. It was awesome. I even met Chris Motionless afterwords, which was really cool. He is their lead singer.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Black Damask. Don’t get me wrong, all of their songs are amazing and I love everything they release, but this one is something else. There’s something very special about it – and it’s all about the lyrics. They are really clever, absolutely brilliant and so dark and wonderfully creepy.

Characters Bring it to Life

To me, this song has characters. A lot of the song is sung from a first person perspective, using “I” a lot. There is also mention of “Miss Cadaverous” who I would imagine is a female character.

To me, this is a really tragic and violent love story.

I sew my eyes shut just to sleep

No sonnet for the recently deceased

They lie awake just to hear you scream

In lacerated lullabies, we all fall down.

There is so much darkness in this song, and it is accompanied by such a heavy sound – it creates a world in your head that is full of death and destruction, and I personally love every second of it. I am an avid horror fan, so to see a real horror “story” come to life in a song like this, makes me so incredibly happy.

To me, it feels like there is a man going after a woman here, a woman who is either dead or close to it. He’s yearning for her, but for whatever reason, she can’t be his.

They portray so much intense emotion here – and I think this is part of the reason this song speaks to me (and probably others) so deeply. It’s just so beautifully written. The lyrics are dark, cryptic, and poetic in the most wonderful of ways.

A Hidden World

Perhaps I am the only person who feels this way, but whenever I listen to this song I see the story of the two characters played out in my head and I always feel like there is something missing. Like there is a lot missing actually, and I’m always filling in more little details and expanding on it in my head. Sometimes I do this knowingly and other times I find I do it subconsciously when the song comes up on shuffle or something.

Bottom line is that I just absolutely adore all things dark and creepy, and that is exactly what this song is. It’s no surprise to me that this is among my all time favourite songs and I listen to it frequently. It’s certainly not a song for everyone’s taste, but in hopes that it might reach someone who will love it as much as I do, I just wanted to share.