Released on: 24th January
It is amazing how bloodless Pop music as become. And how chart music has turned a once masterful craft into an inconsequential sport for autotune producers and Taylor Swifts bum. Music was to be a medium for storytellers. Now it is just a prop for advertisers. Except– there are still bards, balladeers and storytellers who have managed to cut away from the crimes of plenty and kindle the embers of tradition.
Twenty-six years is a long time for a reprise. But then the two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
In this day of pitch perfect soundfonts and digitally reconstructed samples it is with a warm heart and a keen ear that the 90’s Roland sounds are just as haunting and ethereal as they were when Dungeon Synth was not so much built as carved, from thick black smoke. That was around the time when Mortiis originally released Ånden som Gjorde Opprør in 1994 (circa Era I.) The base for this arrangement. And although the world has moved on to stranger things it has wholly become much more banal.
Spirit of Rebellion is a truth stranger than fiction in that former regard. An album that neatly matches its predecessors tempo yet projects a battle hardened confidence. And not so much a reconstruction as a re-telling of a most dangerous tale told by an enigmatic and tragic character; In comparison to much of todays’ music: if the Top 40 is the King James’ Bible then Mortiis is Euripides.
It is ironic that an album rooted deep within the genre called dungeon synth, that inspires images of restraint and torture, to liberate the mind and elicit visions of Tolkien-esq battles, medieval trials and cosmic miasma. And not as the unofficial soundtrack to Middle Earth but as a manifestation of its own lost lore. Yet while the simplicity of dungeon synth and its abstraction of modern practice might not be for everyone. It is with tenacity that it continues to assuage fear from the hearts of man made monsters.
8/10
