If you haven't checked in with Mortiis lately, the 27-year-old former downhill slalom champ, ex-Emperor bassist and erstwhile Tolkien-head may surprise you. Like Marilyn Manson sez, this is the new shit.

The Smell of Rain, a remix and reissue of Mortiis's second album on Earache, barely hints at the changes the Norwegian artist has undergone since dropping the Music For Dungeons shtick elaborated on so-so recordings like Crypt of the Wizard. Mortiis tells me that he's been busy turning his backup team into a first-rate band: "I actually spent most of last year rehearsing and trying to form the band into something that's a good, interesting thing to watch live, not just four guys standing up and doing nothing. This forming a band and making it into something good requires a lot of work."

That something good specifically requires tweaking the songs on The Smell of Rain for a heavier live heft. "The structure of the songs have been changed quite a lot, there's additional riffing and different drum work as well; plus I sing better, thank God, and differently. It's not metal, but it definitely has a few of those elements, while we still try to maintain that old programmed feel as well."

For influences on the hard industrial cum darkwave sound reflected on The Smell of Rain and upcoming work, names like Skinny Puppy, KMFDM and horror director/composer John Carpenter spring to mind -- not to mention Nine Inch Nails. "NIN has been an influence for awhile," Mortiis says, "and I might as well admit it, 'cause it's the fucking truth."

Maybe the most distinctive thing about Mortiis -- at least the thing you can't help but notice -- is the elaborate makeup and prosthetics he uses to transform himself into a sort of interdimensional space goblin.

Asked how that character and look have changed over the years, Mortiis says, "I've used that look for almost a decade now. Man, that's a long time, I'm getting fucking old -- I feel ancient, man. I should be 50 by now! I think in the beginning I had these weird ideologies and philosophies that surrounded the character, but I think that over time it just morphed into being what I am. And Mortiis has changed accordingly, because that's me. If that makes any sense."

But it's the music that has changed the most. "In late 2001 I put the band together; in 2002 we were kind of complete, and we started rehearsing. I actually get to do the whole rock and roll thing -- this sounds a little stupid, but -- I get to do the whole front man thing, sing into a microphone. I don't want to be a cliché, which I am in many ways. For The Stargate, the shows we did back then were kind of interesting for about ten minutes, then it got boring. Things changed drastically with the new band. I was worried I was going to lose the few fans I have," he says, laughing -- "I haven't won them [the hard industrial fans] over completely yet, but it looks promising."

As with a lot of people at the intersection of Goth and black metal, Mortiis went through a brief but intense Tolkien phase. "But I'm kind of past that now. I read the books two times. Now I'm reading Brian Lumley, the Necroscope series. It's about vampires in a different dimension, and somehow this gateway to the other dimension opens up, and these vampires come in, and they're really fucking evil! They're cruel, very sadistic, awful wicked vampires. It's not Gothic at all, which is why I like it, not sipping some red wine and reading some Byron shit -- these vampires will fuck you up real bad. Also, F. Paul Wilson, who I actually used to correspond with. He wrote this book which is the last one in the series that began with The Keep, about these black holes that open up and these insect things come out. Another kind of interdimensional thing."

Mortiis maintains a website (www.mortiis.com) that, among other things, enumerates weird rumors he's heard about himself. "I kind of stopped bothering with these people," he says. "I haven't done anything new with the rumors in about two years. But back then, I was told all these fucking rumors; I was like 'okay, so people are pretty dumb if they think I have 13 toes or live under a fucking bridge, or have sex with wolves.' That's pretty lame. But if you're gonna spread all this stuff on the Internet, if you're going to have fun, I'm gonna have fun; I'm going to make sure I profit off of it. It makes my website kind of interesting, so in a strange kind of way, I benefit from all the bullshit out there."

The transition between Mortiis' instrumental keyboard work and the current phase came about when he felt he'd reached artistic stagnation. "I used to live in Sweden, and I used to release my old stuff through a company there, and then another company which was like a mail order thing. I never got any music made, I never had time to make any music.

"After I released the album called Crypt of the Wizard -- which is a crap album, it has a lot of playing mistakes, the recording was done at home, it was poorly done -- I just thought, I can't keep this up.

Everything I do is mediocre or worse, and I need some fucking quality control. Around the same time I was contemplating moving back to Norway, so I stopped all the projects except for Mortiis, and after awhile I stopped the record company and the mail order as well. It was a lot of work, and I didn't see anything come out of it, at least artistically. I was unhappy with everything I did."

The Stargate, released in 1999 on Earache, marked a creative turning point. "I just stopped everything else. I make less money now than I did five years ago, because at least I had a steady source of income, I was selling my own records. These days, it's the label that sees the money, not me. But the music is so much better, and I'm hoping in the long run I will benefit from it, even financially. That's not the point, but it would be nice."

As for that inevitable question about his Emperor years, Mortiis says, "I won't be able to move beyond that as long as people keep asking me about it. It doesn't really bother me now -- I think it bothered me more like five years ago than it does now. It was part of my life, I was in the band like 14 months. I've been in and out of so many weird phases in my life, but black metal was pushed to the back seat very early on, and it never really came out of there.

"But here in this town we've got a lot of Emperor fans, just guys I sit around and drink with. I know I heard the last Emperor album at a party or something. I'm still friends with Zamoth and Trym. In fact, Zamoth and I are supposed to go into Oslo on Friday, a show or something. He just came back from Canada, he's got a little female acquaintance he goes to see. Trym actually has a tattoo parlor. I've been holding off till I see his stuff. I haven't tattooed myself in five years."

So what can we expect from Mortiis in the near future? "I'm working on some new stuff, it's definitely in a sketchy phase, but it's going to blow The Smell of Rain out of the water."

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