Interview: Mortiis (NOR) - New Zealand Shows This Month

Mortiis aka Norwegian composer Håvard Ellefsen returns to Aotearoa New Zealand next week, performing with full band and local metal titans Windswept in Tāmaki Makaurau's and Te Whanganui-a-Tara. A massively influential force in subterranean music for more than three decades, Mortiis was bassist for black metal icons Emperor during their '91 / '92 era, laid the eerie foundations for dungeon synth in the mid-nineties, then turned his attention to scorching industrial rock-metal for 2001's recently reissued The Smell Of Rain.

On our shores following the launch of his first new long player in six years, Ghosts of Europa, Mortiis and band will play "songs from The Smell Of Rain album and other volumes of Dystopian Despair" at Double Whammy and Valhalla. UTR interviewer Lucy Beeler (Mercury Feng) got on the line with the legendary artist, who spoke about his multi-faceted sonic journey, studio obsessions, and more...

Mortiis NZ Tour 2026
with special guests Windswept

Friday 13th November - Double Whammy, Auckland
Saturday 14th November - Valhalla, Wellington

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Lucy Beeler: So, this is your second time that you're coming to New Zealand, is it?

Håvard Ellefsen (Mortiis): Yes. The first time was 2018. It was part of the first trip we took to Australia and we combined with New Zealand. We did Wellington and Auckland and also actually then I think some independent promoter came on board and booked Christchurch, which was an interesting show. It was basically somebody's living room. It was intimate.

That sounds really interesting.

I think the smoke machine broke and it was so much smoke I could not even see my own hands.

Oh my god!

And then one of the left or right side of the PA stopped working. It was just pure chaos.

Was there a particular reason why you wanted to come back to tour New Zealand? What about from your last trip made you go, "Oh, I want to come back there and play again"

I always want to go everywhere to be honest. It's not really down to me, so much as what promoters are on board this time and who wants to book it and who doesn't want to book it. So you're at the mercy, I guess, of the promoter looking at the market at any given point in time. I've never booked shows myself, so I'm not exactly sure about the economics and the politics of that.

Speaking as an artist, I'm always keen to tour. Always go out there and play. I'm supposed to make a living off of it, so it's in my interest to do as much as possible. So this time it just came up — Valhalla Touring got on board again who wanted to do a couple of shows... I'm like "yeah fuck yeah." You know it's gonna take quite a lot for me to say no. There might be some where I'll go, no I've been there I'm not doing that shit again. But it would have to be a pretty big disaster for me to say no.

I like that. It's like being open to the universe.

This time you've got a full band as opposed to last time performing solo, right?

Yeah the last time I was in the early phases of doing my dungeon synth, sort of a revival type of thing that I did for a good while. And we put out the Ghosts of Europa album, which is vastly different from that stuff. So we're touring a couple songs off of that, and a lot from The Smell of Rain album and then some harder industrial rock stuff. That's what we're coming back with, and obviously that's not really a solo show. It's me and John Siren and Nero Bellum out of a Psychlon Nine and you know, John plays for Front Line Assembly. He plays a lot of fucking bands. I got to know him few years back and we get along really well, so whenever I need a drummer he's the guy I want to work with.

This tour coincides with you re-releasing The Smell of Rain after, it is it 25 years?

We finally got Earache Records, who we worked with back in the day, to reissue that. They did it as part of, in the US -—I'm not sure if this is the thing in New Zealand — called Record Store Day?

It's kind of a thing here, but not as big though.

[Earache] put it out for the Record Store Day in the US and we had a bunch of copies and toured the US early this year. I think the whole album is sold out, the pressings are gone. I wish I had copies to bring to New Zealand but unfortunately I don't. 

Was it their decision to re-issue it? Or was it also you thinking that you want to try to highlight this era of your artistic sound?

It was on my mind for a long time, even while I was doing the dungeons. I always try to think ahead. I always have a lot of material sitting around and I'm always planning my next step, what I think I'll be doing in a year or two years or in five years. I never complete a record or any project and then, my life is just a blank. That never happens. I always have a lot of ideas and little things I've started that I put in the vault for another time. I knew for quite some time, that I was going to go back to the band situation. And while I was working on the Ghosts of Europa record, I realised this is probably what's going to take me back to that.

I made a decision fairly early on in that process to combine it with The Smell of Rain material, because I felt like that would be a good fit. Once I'd completed the Ghosts of Europa record and we had that released, then the next step in that chain of events is going to be me going out doing this band thing again. I also started missing [performing in a band]. It's cool to do this atmospheric dungeon synth thing, but it's pretty static. It's its own thing and I enjoy atmosphere ,but I also used to be a fairly active dude on stage, singing the lead vocals. That's a whole different experience. I started feeling like I want to go back into that and do that for a while.

Then who knows what? I don't know exactly where I'll be in five years. I'm working on some new music now — like I said, I always have stuff sitting around and currently I'm not exactly sure where that's going to go. I think it's very interesting stuff that I work on currently, but I don't know where it's going ultimately. It's kind of sad sounding like, "Man, am I depressed?" The music's great though. That's what makes it kind of fun and interesting to me. Not always necessarily knowing exactly where you're going to land. It makes it mysterious and fascinating and you want to see where it goes.

I feel like that ties into a question that I had thought of. I feel like a lot of fans, of any person's music, when the artist decides to go in a different direction, some fans go, "Why don't they sound like they used to? Why don't they sound like what I expect you to sound like?" What's your experience with that?

I used to get that a little bit in the past, but I that think the people that have followed me for a while know, this is going to sound very cliche, but they know to expect the unexpected. That's a shitty expression, but it rings true at the same time. They know that I try stuff out and I like to experiment, but ultimately feel like I have a certain musical signature. A lot of people pointed this out and I'm happy that they did that, like, "Even though you've done something that sounds different we can still tell that it's you." I hopefully speak for many artists when I say these things, it's just not just me and I'm not saying I'm super unique. I'm glad that I'm one of the artists that seemingly have some sort of musical signature attached to what I do. It's just something that gets injected into it, without me really being aware of what that might be.

I can definitely see that. I agree it's nice when people can recognise a signature sound, and also recognise that as an artist you want to grow and you want to push yourself and experiment. You don't want to just copy repeat every single time.

I think copy repeat is probably a great recipe if you're very successful and you don't want to lose your momentum and your cash flow — I can absolutely see why you wouldn't want to fuck with something that works. I'm not saying Mortiis doesn't work, Mortiis isn't huge but it's fairly well known. At times I completely bomb, but it's in my nature for better or worse to just try shit out. I think if I was just gonna do the same thing over and over, maybe I would make increasingly better albums with that one specific sound. I'm sure I would improve upon that recipe. But I'm very concerned that I would just be bored out of my mind.

But at the same time, as a fan of Iron Maiden I'm glad they didn't evolve that much. I mean also The Ramones, AC/DC, they didn't change much, maybe a little but it was slow. It was probably more to do with production value and things like that. They retained that same sound across their career. As a fan, I'm pretty happy that that's the way that they did it. I mean, the Blaze Bayley era of Maiden, it's definitely not my favourite, even though he seems like a fantastic person from what I've seen — speaking as a fan, I'm just using Maiden as an example. But as an artist myself, I want to keep moving. Thankfully, my fans or listeners, they seem to be completely okay with it. I'm lucky.

Aside from Iron Maiden, what are you listening to? Is there any new music that you've discovered recently?

Led Zeppelin? [both laugh] I don't know, apparently I'm an old grumpy man or something, because when I work on music and other things, I usually get this crazy overdose on sounds and things. So I really, really appreciate silence.

I totally understand that.

I think certain musicians probably would agree, or at least people in my position where you're the one person who makes all the music. It's not unusual for me to just sit there and fucking listen to music for eight hours at the time. Your brain can't take it anymore. I don't even want to turn the TV on after, I just need silence now. I'm really awful when it comes to discovering new music. I'm sure there's a lot of cool stuff out there.

I'm realising that I have a specific weird taste in the way I like things to sound. Whenever I hear stuff now, I feel like, this sounds over-produced, this just too polished. This says no depth to me. I like vintage gear a lot. I like for things to have like really a lot of character and sound interesting and creative. [With new music] a lot of times it sounds compressed to hell. Fuck man. I mean, even if the music is good, it's like how many compressors did they put on those drums? It just sounds like an avalanche now. I complain a lot.

Sometimes I listen to new things and everything sounds too perfect. Even if the music is more alternative or comes from a kind of underground space, a lot of the time it still sounds of overproduced, over-polished, and it takes away some of the character.

I've heard some new stuff — I do the doom scrolling thing. It just makes me relax. I do it on Instagram and try to make my algorithm show me funny stuff, people falling into the water, bullshit like that. But sometimes, the algorithm thinks you want to listen to weird goth music for some reason. I notice there's a new sound that kind of reminds me of early '80s Cure, Bauhaus. That sounds kind of cool. I like that dirty, echoey, tape delays, space echo bass guitar stuff and the bass with all the chorus. I think it's cool that this sound is kind of back in. Maybe that's the next big thing. I can't really tell if it's done with real gear or if it's like just a bunch of like digital plugins. Plugins are starting to sound really fucking good. The point is I'm noticing that this kind of music is having a moment. Imagine that, discovering music through social media!

We don't have much time left so if I could ask you one last question — thinking back to this year so far what do you think what for you has been a highlight?

I think this highlight was finally being able to release Ghosts of Europa because it's been on and off in a making for like six years.

It was starting to drive me crazy [laughing]. When you work on an album that long and, once again I think certain artists can probably agree, you've over-analysed it to the point where your brain may never allow you to be completely happy with it. You're gonna second guess fucking everything. You've kind of crossed the line of return, like you're lost. I was able to realise it and just go, "Okay, I can't do that. Otherwise this album is going to be with me for the rest of my life if I just keep tweaking shit." I went through all the songs, made a bunch of notes for each song. I got to finish or change them from the notes, and then we're fucking done. I was able to do this methodically, which is not bad for me because I have some sort of autistic issue with it. I could have sat there for the rest of my life. It becomes an obsession.

I feel that completely. You just end up tweaking and tweaking and tweaking.

It's hard to let go. The more you tweak, the more things you find that you need to tweak as well. It's like something wrong with us [both laugh]. But I'm also a list guy. I made lists and I followed those methodically, which is another obsession. I was able to switch obsession. Then I finished it and send it off to to to be mixed.

I was like, whoa, I actually let this album go. That was hard. At that point, you're done. There's nothing you can do to fix it. You have to just face whatever happens beyond that. This is when people are going to start hearing the record and some magazines and going to start reviewing it. And you can see these scores — what is it going to be like a nine out of 10, or is it going to be like a three out of 10? I mean, I'm happy with it. It's not usual for me to have the same opinion as most other people. If I like it, that probably means nobody else would like it. There's all these little fears of how it's going to go when you release. It's like the highlight in that sense, at least personally, to let that album live its life out here. Live free. See what happens.

That's really relatable, sounds almost like a cathartic release. "It's no longer with me", so you just have to let it live.

"You're on your own. Good luck surviving in the big world."