Interview with Mortemia (Morten Veland)

Thanks for the interview and let’s get started with the questions:

Infernal Masquerade: Mortemia is 100% Morten Veland, you played and recorded all the instruments, mixed and produced the whole album. Are you doing this as only a recording project? Or do you have thought about having a live lineup and doing some shows?
As of now I consider Mortemia a project, which means that I don’t have any other musicians involved at the moment, and therefore I have not scheduled any touring for the near future. It will be very interesting to see how the album will be received by the press and the fans. If the album does very well I will most likely put together a full line-up and do some touring with Mortemia in the future.

I.M: Your music has been a great influence to the Gothic Metal scene since your days in Tristania. How do you think your recent projects (Sirena and Mortemia) have pushed the boundaries of the genre?
When I formed Sirenia back in January 2001 I was just continuing writing the kind of music that I did with my former band. However I did some changes with the musical concept and type of vocals etc in Sirenia in order to make it sound fresh and somewhat different to my previous band. I kept on writing my kind of songs at all times working hard to improve as a song writer and perfecting my style. With Tristania we broke barriers and with Sirenia my goal was to take it further with a new twist to it though. With Mortemia a lot of the elements in the music are the same, although one of the things that I decided on from the very beginning was not to include any female lead vocals. I wanted a different sound for this project, as both Tristania and Sirenia relied on a lot of female vocals. I wanted to exclude this element from Mortemia’s concept to make it sound different. In Mortemia I base the vocals on an interaction between my extreme vocals and choirs. In the gothic metal scene this is something quite different as I don’t know of any other band doing it in this way. More or less all gothic metal bands are fronted with a female singer these days.

I.M: With Mortemia, what do you plan on achieving? Since you have toured most of the world and enjoy great success in your previous musical ventures?
Some years ago I decided to take Sirenia into a more melodic direction. However I still composed a lot of music in different genres and I ended up with a great amount of ideas that basically didn’t fit in Sirenia’s musical concept anymore. So I was faced with two options, either to throw these ideas away or create a new project where I could put these ideas into life. I thought that a lot of these compositions were way too good to be left uncompleted, so I decided to form Mortemia. I began working with all the ideas that I had and that could not fit into Sirenia’s music anymore. Due to that they where either too complex, too hard or did not have the right expression musically speaking. So with Mortemia I wanted to create music that were maybe a little bit back to my roots in one way, but at the same time I wanted it to sound fresh and different. The orchestrations, the symphonic and the bombastic elements still have an important role in the music. It is a balanced blend of metal and classical music. So most of all I formed Mortemia to be able to express more of my musical ideas over a wider range.

I.M: How do you see Mortemia as a ‘set-up’ from Sirenia?
Musically I think there is a lot of links and similarities between Sirenia’s two first albums and Mortemia. It’s mostly the vocal concept that makes the biggest difference.

I.M: What would you say is the main musical difference between your current bands (besides the use of Female vocals)?
I would say that the biggest musical difference is the guitar work. The guitars have a way more leading role in Mortemia than in any other band I’ve been a part of. ‘Misere Mortem’ is a very guitar driven album with a lot of riffing and melodic solos.

I.M: With every release and every band, your sound keeps getting more bombastic, is there a limit to where you want to take this sound?
Hehe, the sky is the limit. Well, I’ve always been aiming for a bombastic sound and I love the combination of a powerful metal sound blended with huge orchestrations. This sound is something that really appeals to me and it is a sound I love to work with, I love to make this huge arrangements. And you know I always try to improve my way of doing so, always trying to perfect that sound.

I.M: Ever thought of creating a project and playing a completely different style of music?
Yeah, I think of it every day. I have written a lot of rock n roll song and a couple of Norwegian folk music inspired metal songs etc. Maybe there will be even more projects in the future, it’s all about finding time for all these things.

I.M: Did you ever imagine you would get as far as you are now by playing Gothic Metal?
My biggest dream was to be able to make a living out of music and to spend as much time with it as possible, that dream came through 4 years ago. This is something that I have been working extremely hard for since the age of 15, I sacrificed my education and most of my social life to make it happen though. Haha, but it was worth it, I would not have it any other way.

I.M: What is next for Morten Veland? Will Sirenia continue? Is there going to be a future release from Mortemia?
Sirenia is going stronger than ever. We just finished a European tour and now we are off to tour South America and Australia followed by more festivals and shows in Europe again. I am almost finished with the song material for the next album too. We aim to finish the recordings this summer so most likely the next album will be scheduled for release by the end of the year or early next year. Furthermore I have already written several new ideas for the next Mortemia album, so there will definitely be more Mortemia albums as well.

I.M: Lastly, some people might think it was very self-indulgent to name the project Mortemia, what do you have to say about this?
Haha, that’s a long story. When I began looking for a name for this project I had a hard time, I decided that I wanted a band name consisting of only one word. I found a lot of cool names, but every time I googled them on the internet to see if they were available I discovered that they were already in use. At some time I thought ’Fuck it!’ I need to find a different approach to it all. Over the years a lot of people called me Mortem instead of Morten which is my true name; probably by mistake I would guess. Mortem is the Latin word for death, and I decided to play around with that word, adding the IA at the ending to give it sort of the same sound as my 2 other bands. In the beginning I though; well, is this band name good enough? But I came to like it more and more. Now I am totally satisfied with the name.

I.M: Anything else you want to add for your fans and our readers?
Cheers to all the readers of Infernal Masquerade! Check in at www.myspace.com/mortemiano and add Mortemia as a friend in order to stay up to date on all future activities.