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Mortemia > Misere Mortem > Reviews
Mortemia - Misere Mortem

Morten Veland is a one-man band - 75%

TrooperOfSteel, June 28th, 2015
Written based on this version: 2010, CD, Napalm Records

The name Morten Veland is well known in the gothic metal genre, the Norwegian guitarist (among other abilities) is the founder of the gothic metal bands Tristania and Sirenia. Now the avid musician has formed another band, this one a one-man band called Mortemia. The debut album is entitled ‘Misere Mortem’. Back in the mid 90’s, Veland was jointly responsible for the next generation of Gothic Metal with his band Tristania (as well as Theatre of Tragedy and The Sins of thy Beloved) by incorporating angelic and even operatic female vocals into their gothic sound, combined with the traditional aggressive male growls.

Veland formed Sirenia in 2001 after leaving Tristania and the sound of Sirenia was basically a continuation on from what he achieved with Tristania; but eventually evolved into it's own sound from their ‘Nine Destinies and a Downfall’ album onwards. But as always, Morten Veland still needed to feed his creative urges. Enter Mortemia. What I found most impressive with Mortemia, is that Veland does it all himself; all the instruments, the song-writing and the producing/engineering/mixing. It was all done at Veland’s own Audio Avenue Studios in Norway. Truly, Morten is a man of many, many talents.

Mortemia’s sound can best be compared to a mix between early Tristania and recent Sirenia (leaning more so to recent Sirenia), except for the fact that there are no female vocals. Veland uses his trademark growling vocals on the entire album, and has continued to use the male/female choirs that frequented Sirenia’s albums. The choirs are quite similar to the way they were used on the ‘Nine Destinies’ and ‘The 13th Floor’ releases. The guitar riffs and the bass lines on the album are hard and heavy, with bruising power that commands attention; while Veland’s exceptional vocals are dark, brooding and fierce.

One downfall of this album, however, is that there is not much variety or diversity; whereas each track follows the same structure throughout. I felt that the element of the choirs were somewhat over-used, having heard it before on the recent Sirenia albums. I hate to say it, but at times, ‘Misere Mortem’ sounds quite one-dimensional and it is difficult to listen to the whole CD from start to finish. With that being said, ‘Misere Mortem’ is still a decent dark gothic metal release, and does contain some excellent tracks. Ones which straightaway come to mind include the single and CD opener “The One I Once Was”, the closer “The Candle at the Tunnel’s End” and “The Malice of Life’s Cruel Ways”. Also included in the better tracks are “The Wheel of Fire” and “The Pain Infernal and the Fall Internal”.

Despite the lack of variety on the album and the odd fact that every track title begins with “The”, I found ‘Misere Mortem’ to be entertaining, powerful and pretty much what you would expect to hear from the creative mind of Morten Veland. While fans of the bands that Veland has been a part of (Sirenia, Tristania) should definitely find this album greatly appealing, ‘Misere Mortem’ is an album that all gothic metal fans can and should enjoy. Not only for the dark metal found on the release, but also to appreciate that this entire album was made by Veland and Veland alone.

Originally written for both www.metalcdratings.com and www.themetalforge.com

Epic and spiritual soundtrack for calm hours - 75%

kluseba, June 18th, 2011

The debut album of "Mortemia" is a quite epic and spiritual album conceived by Morten Veland from "Tristania" and "Sirenia". Even if there are some harsh vocals in every song, they are not overwhelming and the sound focuses on majestic keyboard sounds and a choir composed by two men and two women that domiante many passages and most of the quiet atmospheric and medieval choruses that remind me of spiritual ambient bands such as "Era" and "Enigma". The gothic touch of the record is maintained by the dominating keyboards and the mostly simplistic, almost industrial guitar riffs that are not outstanding but fit very well to the desired atmosphere. A few solos here and there add some traditional metal elements to the spiritual ambient influences and the symphonic gothic foundations. I would like to underline the absence of dominating female lead vocals which is very positive to me. I think that this absence adds something unique and refreshing to this record which makes it stand out of the high number of symphonic gothic metal publications in the last two decades.

The album itself is very coherent and no track truly stands out as they all have similar topics, similar sounds and similar structures. Even though the general sound of the album is diversified and intriguing, I think that the single songs don't vary very much and a few more experiments, a little bit more courage and a higher amount of creativity would have made a more gripping record out of it. But mabe that simply wasn't the goal of the artist and he wanted to create the album as it finally is: a very relaxing and spiritual album without overwhelming bombast, creative surprises or distractions in form of energizing solos, complex structures or longer or shorter tracks. This is an album that works well as a background music but could also fit to any epic movie score.

In the end, we have a short and sweet epic and spiritual soundtrack for calm hours and moments of tranquilty. Personally, I would listen to this music in my car while driving in a mysty morning through rather isolated landscapes in the hills with a few castles or small monuments as the combination would perfectly fit in my opinion. This album is surely not very heavy and not suited for most of the metal maniacs out there in the world as it focuses on a very particular atmosphere and a rather small audience in which I would include myself and that's why I give a rather positive rating in here. But even though this record is rather repetitive and way too short, such a low rating in here is not justified as this is still a rather good or at least mediocre effort no matter how you take it.

The Malice of Life's Cruel Ways - 80%

Twistedeyes, February 27th, 2010

There will be a lot of comparison to Morten Veland's main band Sirenia in this review.

Morten Veland decided to make another project named Mortemia. There is a lot of direct comparison to Sirenia in this release due to Morten being the main man of both bands. "Misere Mortem" is a Gothic metal album with strong symphonic elements and incorporation of two main vocal styles, a french choir and growling vocals that never intertwine with each other which are both very clear in the mix and are easy to interpret most of the time.

A lot of readers of this review would be familiar of the bands Tristania and Sirenia and are aware that press comments on this album are that this is quite similar to Tristania's highly acclaimed album "Beyond The Veil", I concur as it doesn't particularly sound much like it in any way and the song lengths are much too short, considering "Beyond The Veil" has an average song length of 6 minutes compared to the longest here being 5:16. A more fair way to describe the sound of "Misere Mortem" would be the bridge between older Sirenia "At Sixes and Sevens, An Elixir For Existence" and Sirenia's most recent "The 13th Floor" with a complete absence of female vocals. It takes the symphonic elements that made "The 13th Floor" a good album and the strong presence of Morten Veland's growls in older Sirenia to make this an effort worth checking out.

After analysis of "Misere Mortem" it is definitely something that should of been released under the Sirenia name. The guitar tone, choirs, melodic guitar solo tone and symphonic elements seem to be lifted out directly from Sirenia. Maybe it was a choice of Nuclear Blast to not allow it to be released on their label under the Sirenia name since I doubt this type of music has a big enough audience.

"Misere Mortem" isn't a complete carbon copy of Morten Veland's previous work, there are several new elements also. Much more impressive guitar solos are evident as the one on the track "The Eye of the Storm" are very unlike Veland to do and the atmosphere of some choir bits e.g the intro of "The Pain Infernal and the Fall Eternal" are Mortemia unique and are well thought out. Thankfully the song structures are more complex on this album than recent Morten Veland endeavors and the lyrics are more darker than I have been recently accustomed to by him.

Not the most original album in terms of content in the Gothic metal scene but fans of bands such as Sirenia, Tristania and Trail of Tears or other metal bands closely based around harsh vocals and choir will most likely want to check this out. It is an incredible effort considering this album was made by one person and the assistance of a choir but I cannot rate it higher due to some lack of originality and self plagiarism on Veland's part.