Mortemia - Misere Mortem (5/5)

01. The One I Once Was 04:46 02. The Pain Infernal and the Fall Eternal 05:16 03. The Eye of the Storm 05:10 04. The Malice of Life’s Cruel Ways 05:02 05. The Wheel of Fire 04:09 06. The Chains that Wield My Mind 04:30 07. The New Desire 03:50 08. The Vile Bringer of Self-Destructive Thoughts 03:52 09. The Candle at the Tunnel’s End 04:00

Morten Veland is something of a pioneer in the world of Gothic Metal; he was one of the founder members of Tristania, and went on to leave them to form Sirenia. So it’s fair to say he knows his way around the genre, and it’s not much of a surprise that his solo project produces exactly that. For the sake of continuity, he’s even managed to end the band name in “-ia”.

This is a proper solo project, no messing about with guest musicians or even producers - Veland has done literally everything himself, all of the instruments, music, lyrics, even the recording, engineering, mixing and producing. In his own studios. The one concession he’s made to the existence of the rest of the musical world is to use a choir, but I bet that’s just because he didn’t have time to multi-track himself singing all twenty parts. Yes, this is the Morten Veland show, his musical vision finally put straight from his head to record in its purest form.

The sound is probably most comparable to Tristania’s second album, ‘Beyond the Veil’, if you‘re hoping for a comparison. There’s much less emphasis on the female vocals, though, which only really appear through the use of the choir - this is a deliberate move, apparently, to help differentiate Mortemia from the legions of female-fronted gothic metal bands which seem to have sprung up of late. Hence, it’s very manly sounding choir most of the time to boot. It all comes together giving an odd impression of having your radio tuned somewhere halfway between Classic FM and, well, something like Ragnarok Radio. Classical and metal are by no means the most obvious of bedfellows, certainly not to the extent that Mortemia attempt, but something about it just works.

This is still very much a metal album, of course, and there are loads of examples of cracking ’metal’ moments; ‘The Eye of the Storm’ has a very rockin’ climax, including a ripping guitar solo, as does ‘The New Desire‘. Indeed, every song has a kicking riff and often an extremely air-guitar-able solo - for the most part the driving force, the bass end of the music, is supplied by the guitars, drums and Veland’s growly vocals, while the melody and harmony lies in the strings and choral arrangements. You’ll notice that not only do all of the songs start with the word “The” (what is this, “In Sorte Diaboli”?), they all have very epic titles, like ‘The Malice of Life’s Cruel Ways’. That’s kind of an indicator of the kind of music we’re dealing with here - it’s not exactly going to be shy, retiring stuff. It’s classical-gothic-metal, with a bloody great choir doing half the vocals - we’re going to be running out of synonyms for “epic”, before long. I’ll throw in “majestic” and “bombastic” right now, before the thesaurus runs dry.

There’s not much point in singling out songs to pick apart, really, because they’re all cogs in the same great machine, movements in this grandiose symphony Veland has put together. That’s another thing he’s taken from the classical style - the way I‘ve come to think of it, “Misere Mortem” is not so much a concept album as a suite, in the same way as you’d think of “The Planets” by Holst, or Saint-Saëns’ “Carnival of the Animals”. There’s a definite narrative strain in there, and the songs can easily run together if you’re not actively looking for the gaps.

The production is actually pretty solid, for an in-house job; some of the strings and so forth sound a bit, well, fake, but for the most part it’s a very convincing racket. You’d have to be really, really trying to pick holes in it. The tone is rich and - I was about to say ‘lustrous’, but despite how right it sounds in my head I think I might have learned that word in a shampoo advert, so instead I’ll just go for - atmospheric. There really is an excellent dark atmosphere created in some of the quieter moments of the album. The guitars and the lower end of the sonic spectrum mesh very well with the orchestral stuff, and the piano and choir, which isn’t actually the easiest thing in the world to do in production. It all comes together very nicely, and creates a really epic feel. Epic, majestic and bombastic, even.

Morten Veland. What a man. First he founds two of gothic metal’s top bands, and then comes out with a completely self-produced one-man-band solo effort - and an incredibly epic one at that. And all of this by the age of just thirty-two…it’s hard not to be impressed by that. The sheer ostentatious scope and vision of this album are breathtaking, for one man to have crafted the entire thing inside his head. To say he “knows his way around the genre” (as I did, yes) is a god-damn understatement. I just hope that he finds some way to take this crazy vision of his on the road, because I’d be first in line to see how the hell this madness would sound live.

Misere Mortem is available to buy or download at Play.com

Genre : Death Metal, Gothic Metal

Article by Phil Sim