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MORTIIS
"Perfectly Defect"
During the two-year process of slaving over Mortiis’ upcoming full-length, “The Great Deceiver,” the members of the band – Mortiis (vocals), Levi Gawron (guitar), Ogee (guitar), and Chris Kling (drums) – also had some alternative ideas brewing in the back of their minds. Some of them stemmed from songs on “the Great Deceiver,” while some of the songs were completely separate monsters, more inspired by the music of other artists than the music they were laying down tracks for.
“Perfectly Defect” is a result of the process of creating “The Great Deceiver.”
“The inspiration was very diverse,” Mortiis says. “The album was made across a period of time, so musically the album is really all over the place. Several bands and artists we were listening to inspired us, but I knew the record wasn´t going to be this super heavy industrial metal thing like ‘The Great Deceiver’ turned out to be.”
“Perfectly Defect” reflects the diversity of inspiration. At times dark and broody with a soundtrack-y feel, at times showing the influence of Prodigy-type nastiness, and at times full of metallic noise and filtered walls of noise, “Perfectly Defect” is the flip side of Mortiis’ dual personality.
The album’s title is more than a name for “Perfectly Defect,” it is a reflection of the music within. “The title track is actually a really troubled song - it went through various titles and arrangements,” explains Mortiis. “Imagine someone so messed up inside, it almost borders on some sort of living piece of art. I was inspired by a certain human being when I wrote those lyrics. I thought the title also was befitting of the album itself because I thought it reflected the really asymmetrical, almost schizophrenic collection of songs."
Mortiis – the person – has had a career that has taken him down a myriad of musical paths, some similar and some starkly different.
“Often I wonder why I do this…I mean I love music, but every time I put an album on, I just end up dissecting it and comparing to my own work, which usually leaves me exhausted mentally and rather uninspired and somewhat skeptical towards my abilities to create something as good or better. I never learned the rules of music, the studio, or even performing. Nobody was ever around to show me anything, so it was always about dissecting other people´s work and trying the same things myself, and invariably I´d fail. Maybe that´s why my shit sometimes comes off sounding different from other records. I´ve just always been a bit of a misfit, even among misfits. Doing it my way is the only way I know.”
The one common factor is the catharsis he experiences through making music. Though cynical about the “industry” of the business, the musical process provides a cleansing experience for the musician.
“The times I feel like I´ve accomplished something just totally erradicate those other times when I feel like everything I´ve done has been a waste of time. It´s like a kind of high, nothing can really kill that feeling, that emotional state when all the shit and negativity, doubt, and self loathing is washed away. If only for a few moments. Those moments are everything to me.”
MORTIIS’ ‘PERFECTLY DEFECT’: PERFECTLY FREE!
OSLO, Norway – Mortiis will satiate fans’ desire for new music this October 10 with “Perfectly Defect,” a completely free, full-length, downloadable album.
The album will be available at www.mortiis.com beginning on October 10. There is no cost for the download, but donations to cover the cost of recording may be made through the website.
“Putting ‘Perfectly Defect’ out as a free download was a decision we made after some consideration,” said the band’s namesake Mortiis. “The new model of the music business is important to keep in mind; there´s a new mentality out there in terms of how people acquire their music now. For better or worse, music seems to have become a medium a lot of people aren´t prepared to pay for…At least not in the old fashioned way. So, even though it took a while to get comfortable with the idea of giving away music we´ve worked hard to create and paid to record out of our own pockets, we decided to go with it. We also thought it would be a really cool gift to our fans that have been waiting around for ages for something new to come out.”
Mortiis has spent much of the past couple years writing and recording “The Great Deceiver,” the long-awaited follow-up to 2004’s full-length “The Grudge” and the 2007 remix album, “Some Kind of Heroin.” “Perfectly Defect” is a result of the sessions for “The Great Deceiver.”
“When we were writing and working on ‘The Great Deceiver’, we were coming up with all sorts of inspired stuff, a really varied collection of music,” Mortiis said. “Some of that stuff was put aside, and the initial idea was to create a secret website for people who bought ‘The Great Deceiver’ to access and download exclusive music from. We were planning on putting up a selection of new and remixed music from TGD. However, in time, as more music was added to that project, it started to dawn on me that this stuff holds up on its own and it could be another record, so why not put it up there as a download album for everyone to get instant access to?”
If you listen carefully, you will hear certain elements from “The Great Deceiver” in a couple of the songs on “Perfectly Defect.” What used to be re-mixes, were slowly manipulated into songs of their own. “Perfectly Defect” stands in contrast to “The Great Deceiver” with its varied, experimental, and largely instrumental songs. “The Great Deceiver,” however, is a through and through heavy and somewhat dark record. “Perfectly Defect” injects the melody from some of Mortiis’ older albums into the big-sounding, dirty, and angry, vibe of “The Great Deceiver” for yet another stage in the evolution of Mortiis’ music.
“I think we really captured a cool vibe here,” he said. “It’s not easy marrying anger with melody, but I believe we did it,” Mortiis said. “ The songs on ‘Perfectly Defect’ were created across a period of time, and I believe it shows in terms of what inspired these songs. Some of them are rather soundtrack-y in a dark and sometimes bombastic way. Others we’ve been shamelessly ‘borrowing’ from certain other bands, stuff we were having fun with, kinda like an homage to some stuff we were listening to at the time.”
With the concept of digital distribution came a new empowerment for Mortiis – one where the artist controls his own artistic destiny.
“After our record deal finally expired, I had developed a profound aversion to the very idea of letting other people control my art, my lifework,” he said. “So, again, the idea of the new technology really did grow on me. We dealt with some really evil stuff in the industry. Nothing shocking in terms of industry practice, but at a human level, it was a living nightmare. It reached a point where we fired everyone around us except for the handful of people we knew we could trust. It was a big move, but had to be done in order to survive. It was like rewinding the clock back to the start and beginning with a clean slate. We started working on a ton of new music right then. With the advent of modern technology, we realized we could do a lot of stuff without the often self-serving, meddling record labels. No record label would ever have let us put out an album for free, with the option to donate if the fans wanted to.
