Mortiis delves into the past with Ghosts of Europa.

For his eleventh album, Håvard “Mortiis” Ellefsen (formerly of Emperor, Fata Morgana, and Vond) has chosen to join Prophecy Productions.

The album also features numerous guest vocalists and instrumentalists: Benedicte Computorgirl (Computorgirl), Christopher Amott (formerly Arch Enemy, Dark Tranquillity…), Christopher Rakkestad (Elvarhøi, Bolverk), Emil Nikolaisen (Brian Jonestown Massacre), Iliana Basileios Tsakiraki (Enemy of Reality, Septicflesh…), Laurie Ann Haus, Matthew Setzer (Skinny Puppy, London After Midnight), Michal Kielbasa (Black Magic Rites), Sarah Jezebel Deva (The Kovenant, formerly Cradle of Filth…), Thomas Bolverk (Ragnarok, Bolverk), Thorsten Quaeschning (Tangerine Dream), Vegard Blomberg (Mock), and Erling Blomberg.

Ghosts of Europa, the title track, immediately draws us into its dreamlike world with a light-hearted introduction, joined by a sampled voice before the arrival of more infectious melodies and new vocal parts, with effects that underscore the industrial tones. The catchy choruses eventually give way to a heavy melancholy with Return to the Old Fields, the next track, which offers a few more mysterious touches before the vocals in turn cast a spell over us, letting keyboards and various percussion instruments lead the dance toward distinctly more electro tones. Silence finally takes hold before The Faith That Fades Away follows suit, rooted in a certain unsettling minimalism in its opening moments, then growing more oppressive as the sound thickens, crackling and offering dark undertones. In contrast, the vocals are more accessible, allowing us to explore the various nuances before Violent Silence takes its place with highly catchy, almost playful elements, further fueling the album’s diversity while increasingly finding its roots in the German scene and its intense contrast, which ultimately drowns us in its synthesizers. Transcending Morpheus takes us back to a world of elements that are part ethereal, part mystical, almost verging on Neo-Folk at times with its resonant, natural vocals, though the vocoder occasionally distorts them to heighten the duality, while Tundra, Heart of Hell features a more aggressive distortion. This saturation notably energizes certain sections of the track, such as the rousing choruses with their catchy lyrics that one could easily imagine singing in unison at a live show, before giving way to Tribes of Dystopia (Edit), which offers a fresh Pagan/Folk vibe, especially particularly with its guttural vocals, but transformed into heavy yet captivating waves thanks to its noise elements. The album is already drawing to a close with Farewell Romero, a fairly calm final track that exudes both melancholy and serenity  – a strange feeling when you take a look at the lyrics – but one that intensifies at times, particularly thanks to the vocals, which become more gripping and lead us into its palpable distress right up to the very last moments.

Always working with impressive creative freedom, Mortiis explores new horizons on Ghosts of Europa, never shying away from the richness and intrinsic diversity of his creations. There’s no doubt that the album needs to mature several times in our ears to unleash its full potential!

90/100

Version Française ?

A few questions to Havard “Mortiis” Ellefsen, thinking head of the Darkwave/Dungeon Synth project Mortiis, about his new album, Ghosts of Europa, by Raven.

Hello and first of all thanks a lot for taking the time to talk with me! How are you?
Havard “Mortiis” Ellefsen: I’m OK. I’ve done a bunch of interviews today, but I’m in the zone, I guess, so it’s all good.
Raven: And by the way, before I forgot, on Saturday I saw a gig of Xtort, and they asked me to say hello to you.
Mortiis: Very cool! I didn’t forget.

How would you describe Mortiis’ music without using the words “Dark Ambient”, “Darkwave”, “Dungeon Synth” or any other subgenre? I want your own words.
Mortiis: I think I would say it’s explorative, if, if you know what I mean by that. I explore sounds. Pretentious answer. I definitely like to experiment and try things out and see what works, and if I can create something that sounds different that’s interesting to me. 

Do you remember why you picked the name Mortiis when you started to play music? How do you still link this name to the music you play now?
Mortiis: Well, the thing is I picked it before I started to play music, I think maybe like in 1990 or 1991. It was a little before Emperor got started for sure. We were already into the scene, and riding with other bands, ordering demos and being active in the underground. I had a couple of other bands before Emperor too where I was playing bass and I was a vocalist in one of them. So during that time, at some point I was already playing music when I picked the name but it was before the whole Black Metal thing anyway. I had it by the time Emperor got started, I already had the name Mortiis. It was just something we thought was cool because we were into Venom and Sodom and Hellhammer and all those old bands, and they all had these sort of crazy artist names, they were all called like Necrobutcher and Euronymous and maniac and all of that. I sent like fan mail to the old Hungarian band Tormentor and the guy that responded to me was not in the band, but he was handling their fan mail, and he signed all of his letters with “something something” and then this Mortis. Some Latin “morti” and I were “wow, it’s cool, I’m gonna steal that and use that as my artist name or just just as my nickname”. I was an artist at the time, I think maybe I had my first band and it was just having fun but yeah, I stole the name. I thought it was cool. I was 15 years old. When you’ve been known under a name for that long. I think perhaps it becomes simply just a name. And I’m not sure how important it is for that name to make sense with the music anymore. It’s just, I’ve been called Mortiis for the most part of my life. It’s just a name now and I’m not really concerned whether or not it matches with the musical style or whatever.

You’re about to release your eleventh album, named Ghosts of Europa, how do you feel about it? How would you sum Ghosts of Europa’s identity up in only three words?
Mortiis: I find it to be my personal feeling. I think I succeeded in making it quite mysterious. It travels in a sonic landscape. And I think it’s expensive, because I’m doing things on this record that I haven’t really done before, I feel. Traveling. Expensive. And I forgot the other word.
Raven: Don’t worry, that’s interesting!
Mortiis: What you have to think about is that it’s not a blackmail record, so you can’t say it’s atmospheric, it’s dark, it’s brutal and you gotta use different words to honestly describe it.
Raven: At least it seems quite different from your previous albums.
Mortiis: I agree. I think there’s a lot of elements to this, that is definitely different. But I mean, personally, I did feel while I was making it that okay, I mean, I feel like I’m picking some bits and pieces from previous ideas that I’ve had from previous records. There are some elements that I think you could kind of connect with some previous releases, but I think predominantly. I’ve probably made a record that… For sure it sounds different, and just kind of gone further into space or in some sort of strange unexpected direction.
Raven: I was surprised, to be honest, because when I’m thinking Mortiis, I’m thinking of The Smell of Rain.
Mortiis: I think there are moments there that you could definitely connect to The Smell of Rain. I like to know that I can keep at least a small anchor to the various sounds that I created in the past. I don’t want to completely forget my past, but I also don’t want to be stuck in it. In a sense you could say I paid tribute to earlier ideas that I’ve had, and while I’m also trying to move forward and discover new sounds and weird sonic areas. But then again I feel Heart of Hell is actually fairly similar to some of that The Smell of Rain stuff.

Ghosts of Europa happens six years after the previous one, for which you toured back in 2022 in Europe. Are there any changes you noticed into your composition process? Why did it take this long to create Ghosts of Europa?
Mortiis: One thing that definitely affected the way that I wrote music was to have a lot of collaborators on the record, there’s a lot of people that have contributed with the voices and guitars and other things. With some of the vocal performances, a lot of times when they sent those back, they would have an influence on the way that I decided to continue writing this song. Sometimes I would actually, for example when Laurie Anne House sent some of her vocal stuff back to me, it was so fucking cool that I actually decided to rewrite the song a little bit. This goes for Tribes of Dystopia and Transcending Morpheus, especially those two, what she just gave me here made me think: “this is so powerful that I’m actually gonna rearrange the song a little bit around her voice to make it integrate even more”. And that’s just one example.

Is that the reason it takes so long to create Ghosts of Europa?
Mortiis: Well, it’s a little bit of the reason, that does mean it takes longer because every time you get something back, then you change your work tactic a little bit to accommodate with the new material that you received. But a bigger reason really is because throughout all this time the early beginnings of the record was during COVID. I don’t think it’s been 6 years, maybe 5. I’ve done a lot of touring, so every time you go on tour, there’s a lot of work before you go on tour to prepare, weeks and weeks of preparations. You have to put everything else aside, then you go on tour, and you’re gone for however long you’re gone, then you go back and there’s still some post tour work to be done. Touring eats up a lot of time. Even more than the actual tour, there’s a time before and after the tour that also eats up a lot of time. I did 2 or 3 tours almost every year, I think I’ve toured the states like 5 or 6 times since I started working on this album, that’s a huge distraction, then I re-recorded my first album actually, which took me about 3 months. Ghost of Europa has been a very on and off project, the most intensely I’ve worked on it has probably been the last 3 or 4 months, when we finally set like a deadline. It’s gotta be done by that date, because then you have to mix it and everything. A lot of my own vocals hadn’t been recorded yet, so it was like it was a lot of hard work from November to February. That was a very intense period to finally get this, this fucking thing done, but because it’s been in progress for so long, it reaches a point where you almost feel you’re just sick of it. I gotta get this album behind me now.

Mortiis’ goal is to tell stories through music, and has many roots, but which bands would you quote as your personal main influences? What inspires you to create music, and how do you write your stories?
Mortiis: You could say that when I did the dungeons and stuff there was certainly a huge storytelling factor. There’s no doubt about that with this music here. I’m not as focused on telling stories with my music. Of course it’s a compliment, if somebody experiences your music as some kind of journey, you know, that would be fantastic, that’s one of the best compliments you can get in my opinion. If somebody goes: “hey man I was just floating away when I heard your music, it took me to a different place. That’s, oh wow!”, that’s one of the coolest things that I can hear. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s my goal. But I do take it as a great compliment if people tell me that. My personal goal is and most of the time has always been to simply create music that I can feel proud of, that I feel represents me, and I suppose in a way it visualizes me as a person. I hope it’s gonna be something that I can look at in 20 years as an old man, and still enjoy and feel proud of, that would be my ultimate goal.
To be honest, I still enjoy your first album, so I think you achieved that. But to continue my question, which bands would you quote as your personal main influences?
Mortiis: I don’t know what band inspires me the most to make music, because, to be honest with you, during most of the time of making this record, I wasn’t really listening to other bands. I’ve been really bad at listening to music for the past few years. The reason is mostly because I work on so much music myself that once I turn off my speakers, I really enjoyed the silence. There’s something when you’ve spent hours and hours and hours tweaking away at music until your ears are almost bleeding, you really don’t want to put on another record by someone else, you just wanna zone out and do something different. You don’t wanna think about music. Maybe I would rather just watch a movie or relax in some kind of way, or read a book and recalibrate my ears. I think it’s what they call occupational hazard with a lot of people that work on a lot of music, and especially when I get to these intense periods of many hours in a row every day, I just need that break. So I’m afraid I couldn’t really tell you what band influenced this album. I was just inspired anyway to just make music and I don’t want to sound pretentious or high on myself, but I found inspiration and motivation in the moments where I thought I was creating something that sounded good. That usually happens a lot of times that gives birth to additional ideas, and so it develops in a natural kind of way. Also I do drive my car a lot because I live in both Sweden and Norway. So my family lives down in Sweden, but I have my work in my studio in Norway and I spend a lot of time on the highway back and forth between my family and here in my studio, and I just turn on the radio. There is a cool Swedish Rock show that I always listen to and sometimes there’ll be a song that has something cool that happens in it, and: “oh, well, that’s a kind of a cool idea that they had in that song” and I tried to to remember it, and maybe I can use that in my own music. To be honest, that’s the closest thing that I’ve gotten to for a long time being influenced by other music.. 

What is your personal favorite song on Ghosts of Europa, or maybe the hardest one to achieve?
Mortiis: Well, thankfully, I’m satisfied with all of them. I think they all have their own personality in a way. It’s kind of hard to pick one, because for the longest time it was Ghosts of Europa itself, but that song I’ve heard so much recently that I’m a little sick of it. There are other songs in the record that are, in my opinion, more creative and and probably a bit more interesting sonically with things going on inside of it. I really like Farewell Romero, to be honest with you, I think that’s a cool song and it ends the album, and it’s got a bit kind of a cool backstory and it’s one of the oldest songs on the record; that one was, as a matter of fact, influenced by John Carpenter, the movie maker, the guy who made Escape from New York, The Fog and Prince of Darkness, which is a fantastic movie. The cool thing about John Carpenter was he wrote his own soundtracks because apparently it was too expensive to hire outside composers, so he made his own soundtracks using really cool synthesizers back in the day, and he had a collaborator called Alan Howarth, they had a very specific sound. And that song is actually kind of a tribute to the movie called Escape from New York which is a very cool movie with a very, very cool soundtrack, and it’s like a bit of a tribute to one of the characters in the movie. While at the same time, the lyrics are personal to me, but I’m also stretching out a hand to that character in that movie who unfortunately the actor actually died, which is why I’m calling it Farewell Romero, Romero is the character in the movie, so that’s, that’s the closest thing that really influenced me, I suppose. Also that song has kind of an interesting meaning to me, it was the last song I recorded for the album vocally, I re-recorded all the vocals cause I was very unhappy with my first performance, and I redid it, I was very unsure if my performance was good, but I sent it in to Sean Bevin, the guy who mixed it, and who I have a lot of respect for,, he said it was a good performance. So I was like “OK, I believe you, you know, let’s do it”. But, you know, the faith that fades away has a great chorus that also has a deeper meaning for me, so that’s another one that I really like.
Raven: To be honest, also for me, it was difficult to pick one, so I understand perfectly. Mortiis: I like them all, thank God for that because it’s my album. If I was unhappy with some of it, then I shouldn’t be releasing it. I think the album has been in the process of being made for so long it’s almost like you develop an individual relationship with every song. Cause you’ve lived with those songs for so long they become part of your life. It’s a little hard to pick favorites, but those two, today I would say those two. Tomorrow maybe I feel differently, you know.

The album has a lot of guests, whether it is on vocals or instruments, how did you pick them then decide to ask them to participate in Ghosts of Europa?
Mortiis: I didn’t make a list of people that I wanted to work with or anything. I think they all, they all kind of, um, Turned up in my life in in random ways where it felt natural to me to ask if they would be interested in maybe doing something on one of the songs or two of the songs, you know, like Emil Nikolaison was a really cool guitar player from Serena Manish and he’s also now in… He’s a live member of Brian Jonestown Massacre these days, so he does that crazy fuss guitar really well, and so I remember I asked him, like I had been introduced to him through our mutual friend Stefan Groot from Apoptygma Berserk, and so I’ve known Emil for a while. This is just one example, I didn’t think about it until I met him, like “wait a minute, he does all that cool fucking guitar stuff”, and I’ve been kind of wanting to maybe put some of that into my music, and here this guy shows up in my life, and “okay, I’m gonna ask him. Let’s try it”. What’s the worst that could happen? He could say, no, it’s not the end of the world. Others were perhaps a little more… Let’s say advertised for in a way, the way that Laurie Ann House came on board after. I had gotten a few contributions from Sarah, because Sarah was quite natural for me to just to ask because we worked together before, and I decided that I think I want more than just one singer on this record. Let’s mix it up and get some more variations. So I actually, one of the few times in my life where I’ve gone online and asked a general question to followers. “Could you recommend some really cool female vocalists?” And, I got all these responses. I made this huge list, and I started checking them all out on YouTube. And I came down to Laurie and and her stuff came up from all the game soundtracks that she’s done, and her voice was incredible, so I decided to contact her with a specific intent to ask her if she would be interested. And doing some collaborations, just doing some vocals on the music, and then she delivered some incredible stuff. All the guys were just sort of friends of mine who actually have studios in the same building as me, so it’s just like “hey man, you play guitar, do you wanna come up here and try some stuff?”. So some of them were really simple things, others were involved. You know, it happens in all kinds of ways.

Do you think you improved yourself as a musician and songwriter with this new record?
Mortiis: I think on this record I’ve done both sort of more traditionally arranged music, and then more evolving at the same time. Ever changing, morphing kind of weird ambient stuff as well. I feel like I’ve covered a pretty broad sense of or a broad area of sound and I think I’ve gotten better at it. I’ll never be The Eagles or Led Zeppelin in terms of songwriting but your motives, it’s enough. You can always be better and that’s my motto. If I feel like I’ve made an album that is better than the previous one then I’m happy. 

I remember the show you did in Paris’ La Machine du Moulin Rouge, opening for Mayhem. Do you remember this tour, and this show in particular?
Mortiis: I remember the tour. I was still drinking back then but I stopped drinking now. That was one of those tours where you’re drunk for 40 days in a row. Tour life can be crazy. But Moulin Rouge, I do have little flashes of the memory. I remember there were like these cool, sort of vintage arcade games in the back. We did a couple of shows in France and I remember I thought it was cool that we played there because it’s a legendary venue. The place is quite cool and quite strange from other countries’ point of view. I guess I must have had a great time cause I can’t remember too much, which meant I was probably drunk and having a great time.

You’re also about to embark for a USA tour with Uada, how do you feel about it? How did you work to get in good shape for this tour?
Mortiis: I’ve practiced my voice a lot, and I hope it’ll sound all right, cause we’re gonna do a lot of The Smell of Rain songs since the Ghosts of Europa isn’t gonna be out until June, so obviously you can’t do a whole lot of songs that nobody’s heard, on a whole tour. We’re gonna do a couple of Ghosts of Europa songs. And then it’s gonna be a whole bunch of like almost the entire The Smell of Rain album. We’re gonna do the whole thing except for two songs, I think and then a couple of other songs more like industrial rock, angry and more energetic stuff. It’s gonna be interesting. I’ve been practicing a lot, and trying to remember the old lyrics. I haven’t had time to go out jogging or get into physical shape. I hope I won’t fucking die, but I’ll be all right. 

How did you build the band’s visual identity with your mask? Do you think it improves the live show?
Mortiis: I’ve done the mask since 1993., for a long, long time. I had a break for a while where I didn’t do it, and then I’ve been doing it again now for almost 10 years. So to me it’s just a very integral part of the visual identity of Mortiis. I don’t know if it makes the show better or what, but it’s just such an integral part. Natural part of the Mortis identity now. That it’s just a natural thing to do. I have no idea whether it makes it a better show or not. I know it’s a lot more comfortable for me to wear it, but that’s my personal problem. 

On stage, you’re helped by drummer Jon Siren, will he also be present for the US Tour? How did you decide to work with him?
Mortiis: I was introduced to him in advance of the previous tour when we did a US tour with Mayhem last year. I needed a drummer because I used to work with a guy called Tim Van Horn, unfortunately he’s sort of out of the music industry at this point, so I needed to find someone else and I was introduced to Jon, we started talking online and that’s how it goes these days. You always meet online. He was into it, and I just sent him all the music to practice too, and seriously, the first time I met Jon was like the day before the Mayhem tour started. We had one day, maybe 2 days, I think of rehearsing or something like that. It was a couple of days. Thank God we get along really well. He’s a very, very likable guy, extremely professional, super nice and has a great sense of humor. We connected really well and that’s all I need. He’s the drummer I would prefer to work with as much as possible, but he works with other bands too, of course.

What will come next for Mortiis in the future? Would you like to tour again to promote Ghosts of Europa ?
Mortiis: That’s part of the job ! One of my main things is to secure shows as much as possible and get tours. I really would like to go back and tour Europe again. It’s been a while now. I have an agent in Europe and he’s working on it, we’ll see what happens in the future. I would love to do it.

You also appeared a few times with your former band Emperor, playing bass like you did in the past. How were those experiences?
Mortiis: I guess a whole variety of emotions. For one it’s fucking great cause they played to much larger crowds, and they play big festivals. I got that experience and I’ve done a couple of those things with them already, and I think it’s awesome that they have this idea, that they want to bring me and Faust out, and do this thing together, just a few songs. Sort of blast from the past kind of thing, and then, of course immediately following by the sensation that “oh this is cool”, then I feel “oh fuck, this is terrifying”. Because I don’t actively play bass, I just rehearse a lot before I do a thing with them. And then I get gotta get up on stage, and it’s only been like a handful of times, but anyway the experience of going up on stage in front of a pretty fucking big crowds, playing an instrument that you’re not really that familiar with, you’ve just practiced those specific songs, and just being completely fucking terrified that you’re gonna make a mistake. I’m very good at being Mortiis and doing my thing in my studio. But I’m not really an Emperor anymore. I’m above and beyond the weakest link. 

You know, those guys are super great musicians in their world. I haven’t been in that world for 30 years, it’s fucking terrifying walking up on stage and they’re looking at like thousands of people literally and then “OK, here we go,I hope they’re not gonna kill me”. This year we’re doing Wacken. Which is fucking huge. And then the next day we’re doing Beyond the Gates, same thing, and I think we’re doing a Spanish festival. I forgot the name of it at the moment. So we’re doing those three things this summer. The feeling you have when you walk off stage and you’ve done is absolutely incredible. At the end of the day, it’s great, terrifying, but great.

Have you ever heard of the French Gothic/Industrial scene? Are there any bands you know and like?)
Mortiis: I have to be honest like I said in the beginning of the interview, I haven’t really paid attention to anything in the past few years. I know, the French have always been creative with Jean-Michel Jarre, Daft Punk, and the Electronic scene, which I know France has been very pioneering in. But I don’t know a whole lot about the Gothic scene over there. I mean it’s like when I was younger, I paid way more attention. I was way more active about finding things out but the older you get and being busy is good, it means something’s going right and you’re staying busy. The result of that is that there’s very little time to be sort of curious about other things. There’s just no time, and when I have time, I’m too tired, no energy. I just got to relax and stuff.

Are there any bands you would love to play with? I let you create your dream poster with Mortiis headlining and three other bands, even unrealistic answers are accepted.
Mortiis: I couldn’t headline any of this, but I think at this point if Enigma had ever done a show, and I was able to warm up, I think some of my music would really work with that kind of sound now or even like Dead Can Dance or something like that. I feel like that would be such a cool combo. My dream would have been to be able to be a special guest or something for someone like Ministry when I was doing more of the Industrial Rock stuff that I did for a while. Which I think would have been a great fit, and even like Nine Inch Nails. Ghost of Europa, that record probably would fit better with something like Enigma era, maybe, Dead Can Dance, Wardruna maybe, I’ve kind of hinted at, that would be kind of cool.

Last and funny question: which dish would you compare Mortiis’s music with?
Mortiis: I have the most boring food habits because food to me is just fuel. I’ve not been much of a culinary kind of person, and you’re French, right? So of course, yes, you can say that because you’re into food. Seriously, I live off of noodles and fucking sausages, you know, cause I don’t give a fuck. My wife is a pretty good chef, she’s good at making food, but I know so little about food. You know I wouldn’t know what to tell you. I like food, but it’s not a big part of my life, it’s just like fuel.
Raven: You killed me.
Mortiis: So I’m, I’m Norwegian. We just eat meatballs and potatoes. I mean, we’re a pretty boring food country. I guess we’re like one step above Germany or something.

That was the last question for me, so thank you very much for your time and your music, last words are yours!
Mortiis: I’m so bad at this. I mean, I really appreciate people listening or reading or whatever, and I guess after all this time, it’s still kind of amazing that people are still interested, that always blows my mind a little bit, you know. So, you have to be grateful for that.