If you are not familiar with the artist Mortiis, than the first time you come across his inhuman visage, chances are you are going to take a second look. Mortiis has carved out a legend for himself that transcends genres and usually brings a lot of misinformation to the table.

To way-lay any additional misinformation forming, I will leave all his past works, histories, and ideologies for you to browse through on Mortiis' own home page (link at the end of page 5) and just fill you in on my own narrow perception of what was and is Mortiis.

My first encounter with Mortiis arose from what is now referred to as Era:1 which is when Mortiis primarily directed his attention to creating somewhat ambient mood pieces with throws to fantasy and medieval works being the mainstay.

These musical sound tracks to another realm were punctuated with deep male vocals, very distorted but quiet, nearly spoken word contrasting with the heavenly female vocals by Sarah Jezebel Deva.

Mortiis has always sported the trollesque look and quite frankly it is what drew me to listen to these early works in the beginning. Now as we move forward into present day and enter into Era:2, we find a new updated troll-kin style, now moving into modern day with physical trappings and surprisingly enough, musically too.

I am sure that to many of his long-time followers the new album came as quite a shock as it did to myself but somehow it felt quite right. The Smell of Rain truly ushered in a new Era by casting aside the ambient nature altogether and replacing it with a rhythmic, industrialesque metal project in the vein of KMFDM or the likes, but unlike the other bands in this genre, Mortiis was still at the helm.

I was personally amazed at what Mortiis actually sounded like vocally. Gone was the death metal styled growls and spoken verse but instead we have full-on singing, clear, un-distorted voice and with quite a lot to say or sing about as it would be.

While the old ambient style lent itself perfectly to his image, it did not allow the personal experiences and outlooks to be fully put to verse but now we hear all the mysterious wizard has to say.

So with the new album hardly leaving the CD player it was with great enthusiasm we awaited our chance to see Mortiis in the flesh at the Wave Gotik Treffen's annual affair.

Hardly able to wait for the band to start, we sat outside relaxing a moment and hanging out with friends when suddenly I heard the first verses "What? That's Mortiis, he 's going on early!" So we ran in and caught the end of the first song by the time we made it through security.

I was so excited to be a few feet away from him that I realized about 20 exposures in that I hadn't even loaded the camera yet! So after some quick loading and trying again, I was able to catch a few nice pictures. Luckily my wife also was with camera so she got shots while I was fumbling.

It could go without saying that the stage show was entertaining. There were a couple of other guitarists and a drummer on stage but no one could really focus on anything but the nose and ears. Mortiis surely steals the show and his performance musically was spot on as well. He whipped his huge dread-mane around like crazy and sang his lungs out.

It seemed like he pretty much did every track off of the new album except one (Everyone Leaves...the really slow moody ballad), my favorites being Smell the Witch, and Parasite God but they were all awesome.

Some of my friends had been wishing for older material but I could see how that would have been difficult to work into the flow of the new material with it's pace and ferocity. I do wish that Sarah Jezebel would have been able to tour so that her vocal parts could have been live.

One of the few problems with festivals of this nature is the limited set time for bands but in this case it was perfect as it allowed a complete set of the new material and made it a concise concert of Mortiis:Era II.

I highly recommend seeing him live if you ever have the chance as well as investigating his web site further, not to mention checking out both Era's on disc as they are two totally different musical experiences.