Mortiis

Håvard Ellefsen, performing as Mortiis, helped shape the origins of Norway’s epic Viking metal style by navigating successive periods and folding in varied subgenres along with narrative threads. Serving as Emperor’s first bassist, he prompted the Norwegian black metal trailblazers to fuse their raging, disorderly sound with eerie synthesizer lines loosely drawn from Norwegian folk sources. Launched in the early 1990s chiefly as an electronics-based solo endeavor, the Mortiis project later expanded into a full band format. Releases from the middle and later stages of his career, among them 2001’s Smell of Rain, 2004’s The Grudge, and 2017’s Great Deceiver, wove industrial rock and electro-pop textures into the framework while preserving the cryptic darkwave-and-black-metal foundations of his prior output.

Although Mortiis left a lasting mark, his tenure in Emperor proved brief: he appeared on the 1992 Wrath of the Tyrant demo, the split with Enslaved titled Hordanes Land, and the 7" single “As the Shadows Rise,” yet never on any official full-length album. He departed Emperor suddenly in 1993 to launch a solo path; at just eighteen he relocated to Halmstad, Sweden, and established his own Dark Dungeon imprint. His first solo album, 1993’s Født Til Å Herske, marked a clear break from Emperor’s ferocity and from guitar-driven music entirely, relying instead on electronic instruments to conjure a mournful, ominous atmosphere laced with goth-rock echoes. Ånden Som Gjorde Opprör arrived the following year, together with the debut of an industrial-leaning side project called Vond, whose album Selvmord later surfaced in the United States as Slipp Sorgen Los. In 1995 Mortiis issued Keiser av en Dimensjon Ukjent—also known as Emperor of a Dimension Unknown—while another side venture, Fata Morgana, released its self-titled first record. A limited run of five 12" EPs recorded in 1996 was later compiled as Crypt of the Wizard; 1997 brought still another side project, the comparatively lighter Cinticele Diavolui.

Fresh Mortiis material remained absent for some time owing to contract discussions. By 1999 he had discontinued his side projects and joined Earache, which issued the expansive The Stargate featuring prominent female vocals from Cradle of Filth’s Sarah Jezebel Deva. Earache soon reissued both Født Til Å Herske and Crypt of the Wizard, and their broader international availability raised Mortiis’s profile while cultivating a dedicated audience. The Smell of Rain in 2001 introduced electro-pop ingredients and marked his first attempt at lead vocals. The Grudge in 2004 shifted emphasis toward heavy industrial rock, later yielding the remix collection Some Kind of Heroin in 2007. In 2010 Perfectly Defect appeared as a free online-only release. After an extended break he resurfaced in early 2016 with Great Deceiver and followed it in 2017 with the companion remix album Great Corrupter. Early 2020 saw the wide release of The Unraveling Mind, an album of previously unheard dark ambient pieces originally tracked in 2006 for an unrealized soundtrack. Tribes of Dystopia, the successor to Great Deceiver, emerged in 2023.