MORTIIS at Revolver (Oslo, Norway)

Support Act: OFFERMORSE

Saturday, April 27, 2019

by Jorge Patacas

Håvard Ellefsen, better known as Mortiis, has been through different phases along his musical carrer. He started out playing Death Metal in the band called Rupturence, switching to Black Metal when he was part of Emperor as their bass player, then he began a solo career where he experimented with different sounds. His first steps as a solo artist were on a genre he called Dark Dungeon Music, this being the beginning of the Era 1. With “The Smell of Rain” album from 2001, his music moved towards Electro Pop and this marked the beginning of Era 2, which was followed by the Era 3 where his sound got strongly influenced by Industrial Rock inspired by bands like Nine Inch Nails. After a four-year hiatus, his come back was with “The Great Deceiver” in 2016, and this was the beginning of the Era 0. While Mortiis works on a new album to be released this year, he decided to revisit his second effort “Ånden Som Gjorde Opprør” after a long time, playing it live in its entirety on a tour that even took him to South America last year. This time, the gig was at Revolver, one of the several venues where concerts are held in Oslo, the Norwegian capital city.
After a very good show by the support band Offermose from Denmark, two banners where put on each side of the stage, smoke started to come out of it, and the masked Mortiis emerged from the shadows with just a synthetizer. There was no microphone for him to talk to the audience at all, but it wasn’t necessary; his cold and intense look was the visual contact with them, while the music did the talking, enchanting and taking us to unknown and very dark places. It’s original, atmospheric and captivating music. As its own definition says, the music on the Mortiis first era sounds like it came out from a dungeon.
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ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO at Herr Nilsen (Oslo, Norway)

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

by Jorge Patacas

On March 27, the legendary Testament guitar player, Alex Skolnick, arrived in Oslo with his Alex Skolnick Trio project, which also features Nathan Peck on bass/double bass and Matt Zebroski on drums. The event took place at Herr Nilsen, a small Jazz club located in front of the court where Varg Vikernes was sentenced in 1994.

For those who are not familiar with Alex’s side project, it was formed in the beginning of the last decade after he developed his passion for Jazz studying and obtaining a degree at the New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music in New York City.
As part of the tour for their fifth album “Conundrum” (2018), the band showed all their virtuosity in front of both Testament and Jazz music fans. In a relaxed atmosphere, while the audience had a drink on the cold Wednesday night, Alex and his band played a setlist that included everything. They started with two pure Jazz compositions, “Unbound” and “Culture Shock”, both featured in their latest effort with a very good response. Then it was time for a very different version of Aerosmith’s classic, “Dream On”, adapted to the style of the trio, and then set out to play Funk in a song dedicated to the late pop icon Prince. But Skolnick’s versatility when playing all these different styles would not end there, since next one was “Django Tango”, which is, as its name indicates, a tango dedicated to the historical Jazz musician, Django Reinhardt, a song that was included in his solo album, “Planetary Coalition”, released in 2014.
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RISE! presents a recap of the INFERNO METAL FESTIVAL 2019!
Concert footage, exclusive interviews and more!
Check it out!

Sunday, April 27

MORTIIS

at Revolver

Møllergata 32 (Oslo)

20:00 hs.

Special Guest: OFFERMOSE

Tickets: Kr. 225 + AVG

The Norwegian band Superlynx has just released their sophomore album “New Moon” after three years of their debut “LVX”. This new effort is getting several positive reviews and the band is currently playing a lot of shows introducing more people to their Stoner/Doom sound with haunting vocals by Pia Isaksen, who is also their bass player. We talked to her as well as Daniel Bakken (guitar) and Ole Teigen (drums) about the past, present and future of the band. Enjoy!

RISE!: – Let’s start talking about the new album, “New Moon”, which has been inspired by the contrast of light and darkness, can you elaborate more on that?

Pia Isaksen: It was written in a period where all of us had recently been through or were in troubling times, and it has influenced our writing and our music quite heavily. But we wanted to focus not only on the darkness and the hard times, but also conquering the difficulties and getting through it, and coming to a new start.

Ole Teigen: In the personal aspect of it, it’s like overcoming your troubles, becoming stronger and accepting your weaknesses. In a more spiritual way, it’s about getting over yourself, looking at other people and the rest of the world with more compassion. We are like a big family. Even though we have different stories, we share a lot. It’s about becoming free from your own demons riding you, you kinda need to embrace them.

PI: The light and darkness thing also refers to the connection to nature and the universe. It’s like a symbol for the things we go through and want to overcome and it’s also about becoming light even after the darkest times. Light and darkness have also been almost a constant theme for us since the beginning.
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