Interview:	MORTAL LOVE
Title:	In love with love

These five-piece was established in early 2000 by the still unchanged line-up Cat, Rain6, Lev, Gabriah and Damous.

Until nowadays the first impression in Mortal Love´s marvellous music is without any single doubt singer Cat, whose beautiful, sweet vocals set their signs in the songs. Already with their first eight-track demo CD the Norwegians composed a complete lovestory. A way of work that the band kept also for their extraordinary fine debut album „All The Beauty…”.

Mortal Love deliver a charming, seductive and revelling Gothic Metal noblesse with a outstanding creative class of it´s own. From the start important elements in Mortal Love were availability, mystique and romance, while having female singer Cat being the optical focus within the troup.

Bass player Hans Olav Kjeljebakken alias Lev reports some interesting things about his love orchestra.

Lev, a short version of Olav?

„No, Mortal Love decided very early to use alias', and Lev is inspired by the creature Leviathan.”

In which city in Norway are you guys located?

„We come from the little town Elverum, not far from Oslo.”

Your fine debut album „All The Beauty…” sounds very refreshing and innovative; what is your own opinion about the biggest reason for the difference of it to most releases in this genre?

„Though we have a basis Goth sound, we try to bring in elements from other genres, such as Black Metal, Death Metal, Grunge and Pop music. We all have different musical background, and as everybody is involved in the songwriting this affects our sound.”

Which role does love in it´s various themes play on „All The Beauty…”?

„The basis of the album is a true lovestory, and therefore love is very essential in both our lyrics and the soundscape.”

Be so kind and explain the main lyrical content of your album!

„We are trying to tell a credible story. We believe everybody can relate to the circle of love (infatuation, love, sorrow and darkness). We also relate the circle of love to the four seasons, and try to reflect this in our music.”

Do you think, love and mostly resulting pain are still classical themes for Gothic Metal?

„Yes, even though not all of the gothic lyrics is about painful love, I feel the music often expresses a sort of romantic tragedy.”

Do you play Gothic Metal with the band? Or what is your definition for the music?

„Yes, we like to categorize our music as Gothic Metal.”

Were you´ve found your singer Cat? Her voice is as magnificent as unique…

„Mortal Love is a friendly compilation, so she has been a friend for some time now. Cat has experience from the musical scene, theatres and a musical theatre academy.”

I have read she´s the centre - optical and with her voice - in the band.

„That's correct. Cat is fronting Mortal Love as we believe in the importance of a front person. From the beginning we focused on good structure, delegating tasks, and define roles, and everybody is comfortable with it. And we think Cat is a natural born front person.”

Which were the inspirations for the marvellous music of Mortal Love?

„We all have different musical influences, but the album is influenced by bands like Cradle Of Filth, Samael, Ram-Zet, The Gathering, Theatre of Tragedy, Type O Negative, The Sins Of Thy Beloved, HIM, Paradise Lost, Moonspell, My Dying Bride, Lacuna Coil, Tori Amos, Nirvana and Alice In Chains.”

Do you have some roots in the Dark Wave genre? I think so when I listen to some arrangements.

„Yes, some of us are into the music of that genre, but as you can see from the question above we like a lot of different genres.”

What exactly has the band-name Mortal Love to mean for you?

„As romantic tragedy is very characteristic in our expression, Mortal Love was a suitable name.”

It was told that you´ve founded the band. Did it take much time to find members for Mortal Love?

„No, this is not correct, but I have the role as the contact person for Mortal Love. As I mentioned above we are a friendly compilation and we started this band as a project based on the love story. We all have different roles, but we are all Mortal Love (the mrtlz).”

„All The Beauty…” – for what stands the title of the album?

“`All The Beauty…` is from the storytellers point of view the description of the person which is loved.”

Plans for the future?

„Right now we are focusing on the promotion of the album, and we hope to do some gigs in the near future. We are very anxious about the response, and I guess the future depends a lot on the response from the media and fans.”

Any last words here to all the new fans of Mortal Love?

„We are very grateful to Massacre Records who have given us the opportunity to bring our music out to the world, and we hope to get positive response from new fans so the Mortal Love journey can continue. We hope that people who listen to our music can relate to it, and find it interesting. Love from the Mrtlz, Lev.”

© Markus Eck, 30.10.2002

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