MORTIIS
EXCERPT FROM SECRETS OF MY KINGDOM:
RETURN TO DIMENSIONS UNKNOWN
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…You appeared on two hugely seminal and iconic releases with Emperor, namely 1992’s Wrath Of The Tyrant demo and the 1993’s self-titled EP [also released as a split album with Enslaved], which was released after your departure. Why did you end up leaving the band in 1992?
“Well it wasn’t a decision I made, it was a decision they made. Really shortly – and I mean really shortly, I think we’re talking one or two weeks tops – after we recorded the mini-album and the As The Shadows Rise EP [released in 1994], which were done in the same weekend session, they called me and told me they felt I should leave the band. I can’t quite recall the details… it was first a conversation on the phone, Ihsahn got the pleasure of calling me, and the next day both him and Samoth came to my parent’s house, as I was 17 and of course still living at home.”
“We had a kind of meeting and I think the bottom line was that at the time I could get a little verbally abusive, and they’d had enough of it. That was the excuse – I’m sure they had a thousand other reasons. They probably thought I was a shit musician and didn’t want to tell me. Those guys were obviously miles ahead in their playing – I was learning as I was going, because at the end of the day I was just a fan who had done some vocals in a couple of local bands. I just happened to be there when they needed a bass player and I was the only guy that would fit in, because there wasn’t a fucking scene back then.”
Were you already interested in dark ambient music during your time playing black metal?
“I think that for at least a year leading up to all that I had started to sort of expand my tastes, and I guess my sense of exploration had begun to develop a little as I was starting to get interested in underground industrial / ambient stuff like Coil, Throbbing Gristle and weird shit like that. I was also really starting to get into that German electronic scene that was already very old by that point, with Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and stuff like that from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Euronymous [of Mayhem] and I would talk about that – he was really into it and had way more stuff than I did at the time. One thing I found fascinating, especially with Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, was that they made really long songs; one album would be two songs, one song on each side, with these evolving soundscapes. I thought that was really interesting, that really clicked with me. Back in those days it was a lot about the atmosphere and those guys created fantastic atmospheres, so I think on that level it really worked for a bunch of [black metal] people, including myself.”
Looking back, do you think that your sudden and unexpected departure from Emperor was the triggering factor in your decision to work alone in creating music?
“I’ve also always been a bit of a loner, always worked best on my own. I’m not necessarily a guy that enjoys following rules that much, I really like staying within my private universe, so it literally didn’t take me more than two minutes to decide, ‘I’m not going to try and pursue another band situation. I’m going to keep my name – my artistic name, the Mortiis thing – and I’m going just to create dark atmospheric stuff. Fuck people, I’m going to do this on my own’.”
Did the creation of the whole Mortiis concept, character and universe begin with that moment of revelation?
“I had a set of lyrics written in the summer of 1992 that kind of laid the foundations for this sort of ‘separate reality’, these different worlds where dark sombre shit was happening. It was going to be used for Emperor as we were discussing the full-length before we recorded the mini-album – I think we knew we were going to do the four songs, that was a done deal, but what about the full-length? We were talking about that and seriously considering doing a concept record and at the same time I was writing these conceptual lyrics. But of course it was never used. Two of the songs were used [on the debut album In The Nightside Eclipse]; ‘Cosmic Keys To My Creations And Times’ and ‘I Am The Black Wizards’, they belong to that set. There were 10 or 12 other lyrics, but of course [the guys] changed their minds about a lot of stuff and took me out of the band, so I said, ‘Okay, but I’m taking these lyrics’ and that’s what laid the foundations for everything that happened in the years that followed.”
“But I think when I started I didn’t necessarily base it on the whole Mortiis concept – why I have no idea, it’s a bit weird to me looking back. Whether I was originally going to base Mortiis on those lyrics or whether I was just pissed off and took those lyrics with me to let rot in the attic – I don’t recall what my logic was. But I made the demo in March 1993 and by the time it was out [three months later] I had already made the decision that the next record would be called Født Til Å Herske and it would be about that Mortiis world, so at some point I made that decision.”
So what was the inspiration and concept behind that hour-long 1993 demo, The Song Of A Long Forgotten Ghost?
“My idea back then – and you have to remember that I was straight out of a whole extreme black metal scene, with all the craziness that was going on, and that I was not realistic by any stretch – was to go to a Transylvanian castle and record the demo there. I didn’t really consider the fact that even if I found a Transylvanian castle – because it’s not like there’s one on every corner – recording wouldn’t be very easy. In theory it sounds great, the ultimate atmospheric record; ‘It was recorded in a Transylvanian castle in the Carpathians’, I was just in love with the idea of it, but I never thought about the logistics – like how do you get electricity down there? Of course I started realising it wasn’t going to happen, so it kind of ended up being recorded in my bedroom instead. Not quite the same, although my bedroom was pretty desolate at the time, a bunch of black and not much else. It was depressing if nothing else.”
From a practical point of view, how did you put that first demo together?
“There was no digital technology, it was just me playing a keyboard that went straight into the recorder. Ihsahn was actually operating the tape recorder and I believe it was recorded on the same 4-track portable as Wrath Of The Tyrant. I remember he was sitting on my bed, reading Conan magazines, pressing ‘play’ and ‘record’ and I was sitting next to him playing. I remember I had to play for the longest time and not make any mistakes, because everything is happening for so long on there, it’s so monotonous, it just drags on. I think I figured out that if I played for about five minutes we could fade in and out and kinda morph it together, because obviously I can’t play for 59 minutes without making any mistakes.”
So you were still on good terms with Ihsahn despite leaving Emperor?
“Yeah we were okay. There was some weirdness between me and Samoth at some point, things were a little cold for a couple of years, but that was basically a misunderstanding. But things were strange with everybody for a couple of years, people didn’t know what other people were fucking around with, people were going to prison and so on.”
Though The Song Of A Long Forgotten Ghost was later rereleased by several labels, at the time it was, as one would expect from a demo, a self-release. How did you spread that tape and your name before being signed?
“Underground channels. I started out with a flyer, the way you did back. Then you made up thousands and sent them out and asked people to pass them on – that’s the way we did it, you never sent letters without at least 10 different flyers. So everything was very supportive back then, that’s what made the underground exciting because every time you got a letter – and back then I got five to ten a day because I was completely engulfed by it – you would get a bunch of new flyers. It was exciting, like, ‘What else is out there?’ You would order a demo or send a blank tape and some international reply coupons that you could exchange for stamps. I didn’t really sell demos, I did that sometimes as well, but I mainly made copies for people. Fucking full-time job, I did that hundreds of times.”
Your hard work lead to a 1994 deal with Germany’s Malicious Records, a short-lived label that was briefly home to the cream of Norwegian black metal talent, including Gorgoroth, Dødheimsgard, Strid, Aura Noir and Kampfar. It’s interesting that although you largely abandoned that genre and would later be embraced by other audiences, in the early days your fanbase seemed to be entirely made up of black metal fans, despite your music technically having no ‘metal’ in it whatsoever.
“Mostly that was the only channel I knew how to tune into. Nobody else would have caught on to that sort of music, I don’t think it would struck a chord with anyone else. Metal fans were starting to broaden their views a little bit, and although it didn’t necessarily have that much to do with metal it had a lot to do with atmosphere. To this day – and now I’m kind of active dealing with this old stuff – a lot of those people are still there, they never went anywhere and are still active. The metal scene, probably viewed by everybody as a narrow-minded bunch of knuckleheads, might have been one of the most broadminded scenes in the end.”
In recent years you’ve obviously embraced your era one works, with rereleases of early Mortiis works seeing the light of day alongside new merchandise and live performances of early albums. What changed for you?
“I think what happened was I started to not mind the music so much. Because I started thinking, ‘Why do I like bands like Hellhammer and Sodom?’ I’m not comparing myself to those guys, but I do think there are some parallels there. I mean why do I like the first Sodom EP? None of those guys were exactly virtuosos, there’s a lot of sloppy shit and it sounds like it was recorded in a potato cellar – which it probably was – but that is the whole charm of the thing, that’s why I fucking like it. I mean I was always more into music than sound quality, these young bands, hungry-as-fuck, that’s when really unique magic happens, maybe without people even knowing it, creating this really important sound and capturing that moment in time – that’s when a bunch of elements just comes together and becomes life-changing stuff. I’m not saying my stuff is life-changing but for a long time I couldn’t understand why these kids would rant and rave about the first albums and then I started recognising that their attitude was kind of the same as to what I felt about the old stuff like Hellhammer and Venom – I mean I think the first Venom is their best album, they barely know how to play and it’s all grimy sounding, I don’t know, it’s magical you know?”
“So after I looked at it like that I started understanding why people were talking about my old stuff, because for a long time I couldn’t understand. But that said it always stuck in my mind that people were still going on about this old stuff, still missing it… those guys are fucking resilient, some of them have been there 25 years and never went away, it’s amazing. I wasn’t aware of this new [dungeon synth] scene that was rising up though, I’ve only been made aware of that in the last few years. That there are new projects coming up and a new generation of people that are inspired by my work, Summoning and other stuff that came out at the time. I still can’t get my brain around that to be honest.”
The Secrets Of My Kingdom book really captures the ambition and imagination of the era one period of Mortiis, and really fleshed out the concept that had run through all of your early releases with these texts and illustrations. It was in many ways proof of how far you’d gone in terms of creating this self-contained world. One thing I’m interested in is to what extent, if any, you believed this world and character was real? Because in interviews of the time you definitely seem to support that notion, saying, for example, in Slayer magazine “The concept is based upon my visions of a world where I strongly believe my essence spirit actually comes from”.
“I was crazy, I was out of my fucking mind – and I didn’t even do fucking drugs [laughs]. It’s a little bit erased by the fog of time but I kind of get the impression looking back that I was searching for an identity and was trying things out basically. There was a period of time, probably ’94, ‘95, maybe even a bit earlier, when I was basically trying to convince myself that the mind is powerful enough to create something out of nothing, this metaphysical idea. I don’t think I ever 100% believed it, but I was convincing myself that the mind can control things and if you have a powerful enough ‘faith’ you could create parallel dimensions.”
“That was one of the founding ideas behind the Mortiis concept because I wanted to make it as real as possible. And, you know, you have to keep in mind this was a completely out-of-his-mind diseased black metal 19-year-old kid coming up with this stuff. On the one hand it resulted in some really interesting material, without which wouldn’t be having this conversation. On the other hand it’s like, ‘Okay… medication maybe? Chill out and have a beer?’ But I’m glad I did the book and the whole Mortiis thing, it’s something special and I’m proud of it even though its completely out there. And fuck it, I wasn’t the only one.”
This is an excerpt from the book MORTIIS - Secrets of my Kingdom: Return to Dimensions unknown, available HERE (UK) and HERE (Europe) from all good metal stores.
