Transmissions from the Western Walls of Time

A live album from Mortiis that was recorded in 1997? Sure, I’ll have a listen. As a longtime admirer of Mortiis’ early work, I was happy to see him dust off his Era 1 music and perform Ånden Som Gjorde Opprør in its entirety a few years back. The more electro/industrial-tinged records from the 2000s and onwards were good, but a little generic and the Nine Inch Nails/Ministry influences were often too obvious for my taste. But despite what anyone may think about Mortiis' musical evolution, his remarkable “dungeon synth” albums from the 1990s still stand out the most in his ever-expanding discography.

So, fast-forward (or reverse?) to this 1997 live recording. It’s not what I expected it to be, and it hasn’t grown on me either, not even after listening to it multiple times. It’s basically a lo-fi bootleg recording, probably made with a handheld tape recorder by somebody in the audience. Although the set consists of five songs plus intro and outro, it is presented here as one single track, and the sound is so distorted that it took quite some time for me to actually recognize the songs and find out when they start or finish.

The audience is audibly not too impressed by the performance: frequent shouting and booing is heard, as well as somebody yelling “where are the ears?” - apparently Mortiis didn’t look the same on stage that night as he did on his album covers. Whatever’s left of the music is therefore sometimes totally inaudible, rendering this release worthless in terms of musical value. No matter how interestingly obscure it is to hear one of Mortiis’ rare live performances from this particular era, my advice is to stick to the studio albums, or attend one of Mortiis’ (still rare) Era 1 shows that he plays these days. It’ll give you far more value for money.