Devil's Review: Mortemia

You might have heard the name Morten Veland before. He was a founding member of Tristania and is currently assaulting the metal community with his crunchy guitar riffs and melodic solos with Sirenia. He's always been a solid guitarist and composer and his solo project Mortemia is a sure sign of that. But how would I describe his solo release Misere Mortem in one word? Repetitive.

Within the notes of the first song, "The One I Once Was" the album starts off sounding strangely familiar. For the casual listener you might be thinking to yourself, hey I've heard this song before. For someone unfamiliar with these projects, or Morten himself it might be hard to distinguish this song from the Sirenia hit "The Path To Decay" where the chords, the cadence and even the guitar solo is almost pure plagiarism.

What's worse for me is that the elements that make Sirenia's "Decay" such a brilliant song is used over and over throughout this album. From the double bass fills to the cookie cutter riffs to the 'choir' parts in whatever language that is on just about every song on this record; it all sounds the same from song to song and just about every track follows that formula on Misere Mortem. I guess you can have too much of a good thing.

I really did enjoy this album though, and I'm always gonna love this style of music; I think my one major complaint is they you can listen to one song and have heard the whole album. If there was a bit more variety on Misere then I think it would have been a definite higher recommendation, instead I would suggest just giving a listen if you were really bored or had nothing new to listen to.

It's still not as bad as a lot of shit that gets made and played out there and I still think you should give it a listen. Just be prepared for some massive amounts of head-banging with some occasional bouts of Déjà vu.

5 sins out of 10

Just for kicks, here's Mortemia's song "The One I Once Was"




And here is Sirenia's "The Path to Decay"








Please visit and spread the word about these Links:


Songs of the Goddess - For and about all things Pagan music.
and
That Devil Music - For the best in Hard Rock and Metal.


That Devil Music's Last FM page!

E-Mail That Devil Music!