“What the fuck?”
It’s a pretty common reaction to Mortiis, both visually and
musically. In the past, any time I’ve played Mortiis’ music for
a friend or shown them a picture or his web site, the
response has usually been something along the lines of a
baffled look of confusion or revulsion.
Mortiis is a weird guy. He looks like a demonic elf, with long
prosthetic pointy ears, a hooked nose, heavy makeup and a
wardrobe that makes KISS look like Weezer. On past
albums, such as ‘Crypt of the Wizard’ or ‘Keiser av en
Dimension Ukjent’ (which loosely translated means
‘Emperor of a Dimension Unknown’), his music was nothing
short of epic instrumental. Mortiis produced soundtracks for
slaying orcs in a darker world (or at least a Playstation
RPG).
Then, with ‘The Smell of Rain’, something changed. Gone
are the long instrumentals. Gone is the sense of epic
adventure and consequence. Gone is the enveloping feeling
of the fantastic the music of Mortiis once instilled.
We’ve entered Mortiis: Era 2.
‘The Smell of Rain’ starts like any other Mortiis album could
be expected to start – the opening track, “Parasite God”,
begins as a strange sounding electronic keyboard line with
a dark tone to it plays a somber tune. Twenty-two seconds
later, the bass drum kicks in, and Mortiis fans say “What the
fuck?” At 1:27, Mortiis fans realize why he’s never put vocal
tracks on his albums before. Mortiis really can not sing very
well at all.
Yet his staccato vocal delivery style seems to fit with the
music on this album, which is a strange mix of Mortiis’ own
brand of electronic opus and Sisters of Mercy influenced
goth rock. While the music on this album is unlike anything
Mortiis has ever really done before, with his solo projects
or during his days with black metal band Emperor, ‘The
Smell of Rain’ is actually a pretty decent album musically.
The vocals are, perhaps fortunately, recorded at a rather
low level in the mix on most of the songs. Not only is
Mortiis a poor singer, he’s also not a great songwriter by
any stretch. There are some pretty awful lyrics on here,
more or less reminiscent of some of the early bootleg Nine
Inch Nails demos.
When you look at the list of artists Mortiis thanks for
inspiration this time around (including Nine Inch Nails,
Enigma, Moby, Vangelis, horrible 80’s synth pop, Rob
Zombie, Tool, KMFDM, The Sisters of Mercy and many
more), it’s almost understandable why this album sounds
the way it does. Key word: “almost”. How any artist can
make a departure like this from their old style of music is
never easy to understand, unless they’re going after Top
40 rotation like Apoptygma Berzerk seems to be doing.
‘The Smell of Rain’ is not going to hit mainstream radio
charts, and Mortiis won’t be on MTV any time soon. It is a
pretty decent album, despite its campy lyrics and almost
schizophrenic musical composition. Fans of industrial,
darkwave, goth rock and dark synth pop will all be able to
find something on this CD they can enjoy. – chris parasyte
