Mortiis – The Great Deceiver

[nyrating]

12th March 2016 Thomas Nielsen Album Reviews 0

I am puzzled.

The only release I know by former Emperor bassist Mortiis is ‘The Stargate’ from 1999. I love it. Atmospheric, ambient soundscapes, oozing of medieval darkness and mystery. Fascinating stuff.

Yet, I for some reason never felt an urge to listen to his other releases. Don’t ask why, just didn’t.

But now that this new release landed in the Power Of Metal.dk inbox, I thought ‘why not?’. I could use some of that dark, mostly instrumental music.

I am rarely surprised when it comes to music, but this certainly was something I hadn’t seen coming. Mortiis, it would seem, have made a time travel from medieval darkness to the 1990s!

Sound and style is more or less something taken out of Ministry’s, and perhaps White Zombie’s, remit, fused with…I don’t know…dance music and Brit pop. This is music for the alternative club scene. It’s hard and pumped, yes, but it’s really dance music. I’m not really the audience.

Some of the music certainly kick starts the dance muscles (however little they are developed in yours truly), but the whole thing lands in a territory where it’s not quite as hard as Ministry used to be around ‘Psalm 69’, the point in time where they really struck a nerve, and it’s on the other hand not catchy enough to be accepted as purely pop. Eventually, it becomes too much of the same.

The strongest tracks are in my humble opinion Bleed Like You and Feed the Greed. Try them out if you’re in a dance mood.

Track listing:
01. The Great Leap
02. The Ugly Truth
03. Doppelgänger
04. Demons are Back
05. Hard to Believe
06. Bleed like You
07. Road to Ruin
08. Scalding the Burnt
09. The Shining Lamp of God
10. Sins of Mine
11. Feed the Greed Too Little Too Late

Playing time: 56 minutes

Release date: 4^th of March, 2016

Label: Omnipresence

Website:mortiis.com

About Thomas Nielsen 1051 Articles

When my old buddy Kenn Jensen asked me if I wanted to contribute to the new site he had created, then called powermetal.dk, I didn't hesitate. My love for metal music was and is great. I wrote my first review during the summer of 2004 (Moonspell's 'Antidote' album). In 2015, I took over the editor-in-chief role.