(The Irish trio El Morta includes current or former members of Mourning Beloveth, but in this new configuration they’ve followed very different and much harder to pin down directions. They released their debut album last month, and around that time Comrade Aleks spoke with El Morta‘s Adrian, producing the following extensive and interesting interview.)
I know that besides me there are a couple of people here who remember the Irish death-doom band Mourning Beloveth and are waiting for a new album from them. They seem to be writing something, but it’s not clear how soon we’ll get it. Meanwhile, their much-ex-bassist Adrian de Buitléar and still-listed guitarist Brian Delaney and vocalist Darren Moore recorded their first album under the name El Morta.
The project previously launched two EPs, but although the Metal-Archives describe these records as “death-doom”, it is simply a label hung on El Morta by inertia. Their album The Man Who Laughs does indeed have doom forms and moods at its core, but this material gives a stronger impression of heavy, experimental, almost avant-garde psychedelia.
Vague instrumental images and a certain monotony of the narrative, cycle after cycle, song after song, keep the outline of the album unbreakable, although El Morta cannot be accused of monotony. The futility of existence, the exhausting pressure of reality, and some kind of latent premonition of trouble form a deafening emotional vacuum, a feeling of claustrophobia that is very obvious thanks to the detached voice of Darren. Strange, uncomfortable, and a bit crazy album. We discussed it with Adrian recently.
Hi Adrian! Thanks for your time and accept my congratulations with the release of the first El Morta full-length, The Man Who Laughs. How are you? What’s going on in El Morta’s lair?
Thanks first of all. We’re at the end of a long period of getting these few tracks together, so we’re doing fine now and taking a break of sorts. We had talked about doing a few short bursts of releases, 3 or 4 songs each, but I wanted to keep things a bit ambitious and get a whole album’s worth together and then put them all out. In the end we wrote 12 songs, picked the best or most suitable to go together first, and here we are. There’s another 2 being added to the Bandcamp release as bonus tracks next week. The remaining few unfinished songs will be done, redone, or rebirthed at another time.
Yes, now you’ve published seven songs, and it means that there are five more left. Will you hurry to polish these leftovers of The Man Who Laughs sessions? Or will you give it time to grow?
Three of them will be added next month and the final two sometime afterwards. The attention it’s received so far has been slow but that’s ok, we’re not going away. Maybe by the time the last few get added we’ll have something else to offer too. We’ve our own other stuff to be at now to tide us over and let the slow burn take place. So no, we’re not in a hurry.
Let’s start from the very beginning though. El Morta was founded in 2020 — how was it formed? What was your original vision of the band back then?
I moved to Spain in 2005 and stayed with Mourning Beloveth until it was time to actually leave. Darren called me one day and said it wasn’t possible for me to stay in the band, the distance being a major thing. I knew it would happen, but anyway. It was a good thing.
I had always kept in touch with Darren over the years and one day out of the blue Brian called me. He’d left the band a couple of years after me. I was starting to tinker with home recording myself, and after talking to Darren one day we just kinda stumbled into talking about writing together. He sent me a rough idea of something he was doing with Pauric, and I messed with that but in the end started writing my own stuff. Brian came into the picture and over some phone calls and sending sound files back and forth we got to releasing Tak1.
How did you define the direction of this project back then? I have mixed feelings towards The Man Who Laughs, because I have to classify it, to tell our readers what it’s about. But this dissonant, eclectic, and doomy album is almost out of the genre. I mean not only music but also lyrics, the concept in general.
I’m happy to hear about your mixed feelings and especially that this is almost out of the genre — that’s the intention. We didn’t have a real direction at the beginning of the project, I’ll be honest, we just wanted to see what came out. Brian hadn’t played guitar in a while and I hadn’t the time but it was always there to do something. The lyrics, well initially we relied on Darren’s book as I guess all lyricists have, and he pulled unused and rehashed stuff and ideas he had there, but we collaborated on lyrics too.
One of the unused for-now tracks ‘El Carmoli’ is named after an extinct volcano right behind where I live. The main riff came to me one day out there for a walk and the lyrics the three of us wrote together over Wassap soon afterwards. It’s a melodic death metal song with black metal influences. It’s one of the first songs we had, and I mention it because it’s what we were working out of our systems individually and collectively. I played in a melodic death metal band called Kingdom which was great fun, channeling Dissection, At the Gates and Dark Tranquillity, so that’s where that came from on my side. We needed to flush out those influences and let the real sound of the band come to light.
“Ectobiidae” is about my hate for cockroaches which has recently turned into a fascination and understanding of their breeding and culture. My own lyrics come from a simplistic observational point of view I guess, but with a dark handful of shitty irony and sarcasm. I don’t tread on the well-worn path and keep things interesting. A song we’ll add later on, currently called “Bleed Nicely,” is basically written about the deceit behind digital recording vs cutting and splicing tape edits like before to get a soundtrack. It’s a mix of our current recording/mixing DAW situation and a time I had to do a project in a recording college in Dublin where Alan from Primordial was a classmate of mine. It was from that period that we both recorded the 1st demo for MB.
So add that to the eclecticism of where we are coming from. Inspiration is all around and music doesn’t need to be too contrived. I’m glad we didn’t press on the 3rd release being the final chapter of a trilogy as we’ve opened up a lot of doors, wounds, spaces and undergrowth.
Metal-Archives labels El Morta as a death-doom band (and we can understand why). Meanwhile the official press-release defines it as “carny / space rock” (and still we can understand why, but barely). From what kind of influences was your experimental doom metal was born?
Yeah, they have to start listening to the newer stuff as it’s not in a death doom category and I think it’s something we’ll move the goalposts on with each release, who knows.
I came up with the genre from the imagery of the carnival/the out-there imagery of the pictures/videos we use. It’s not important for us but for reviewing purposes, etc., it can be useful. People can fuck us around into whatever category they want but that’s where we are now. The space rock I guess is not to imply space as a place but more a creative and wondrous dimension where things can develop/enhance/turn around, multiply, surprise or die.
To mention artists who have been influential on the way here would make it easy, but to mention who you might also hear in the finished works might help make sense, Tom Waits, Arcturus, Faith No More, Borknagar, Bob Dylan, Ved Buens Ende, Primordial, Bolzer, Lankum, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, In the Woods, Paradise Lost, U2 , Pink Floyd.
I don’t know, maybe people will hear more things. Someone mentioned hearing a King Dude influence in the first release, and that’s a guy none of us had ever listened to.
By the way, the band’s location is stated as Dublin and/or Kildare. Where do you really live?
I, myself, live in Murcia, Spain and Darren and Brian are in Kildare, Ireland. We all use the same software to record our parts and experiment with and then I mix and master them from here. High-speed internet makes all this so easy these days. There is nothing like sweating it out in a rehearsal room with your friends though, and that’s a thing I miss, it can be truly magical.
All three members of El Morta previously played in Mourning Beloveth, so those who know the band expect very certain things from the lineup like this. Did you keep it in mind? Do you care about people’s expectations?
We didn’t want to create an MB MkII, that would be stupid. It’s easy for people to think that might happen or maybe wanted it to. I never wanted to go down the path of the old band; I can’t say the same for Brian as his style is very old MB-orientated but new stuff seems to be stepping away from it. I don’t give a fuck what people expect or think. If they like it, cool, but if they want something else, go look elsewhere.
The guys are used to me wanting to fuck things (as in riffwise) up a bit and go on a tangent from a ‘predictable’ path if you can call it that, and that comes back in a different colour, so if that’s the way and where the El Morta sound is going to come from, I’m ok with that as they are too, I guess. We do have a steadfast death-doom song in each release so far, which I guess will help garner attention from our ‘past,’ but it’s not something we want to rely on. I purposely didn’t want to mention MB in the promo material etc to get the feelers out and see what ‘new ground’ it might take us towards.
Why do you want to distance yourself from MB’s heritage? You were in the band since 1998, you played in Hemlock before that? Aren’t you sentimental about your early years in the underground?
It’s not that we wanted to distance ourselves from MB’s heritage. It’s a great band but we never wanted to be a clone. Why? You can’t live trying to recreate or make a newer version of yourself. Hemlock was a different kind of band to what MB was. Kingdom was too. Darren’s first band Pathos was doing stuff like Napalm Death. You can be sentimental but it’s healthier to move on. Maybe El Morta will finish now too and we’ll do a different kind of band, who knows.
I do get sentimental sometimes about the early years and I was heavily into it while I was there but no. It’s over, move on. I helped run a label, started a concert agency, I played in different bands, later ran a PR agency, tour-managed bands, booked tours. After each one was over doing their thing, I moved onto the next like a coldblooded assassin.
Is Mourning Beloveth still alive? Can you share any information about a possible new release?
They are and are currently writing and rehearsing new stuff. I don’t really know any more.
Foremost, El Morta recorded two EPS – Tak1 and TYKII, both released in 2022. What kind of musical and lyrical ideas did you seek to express through these works?
Well, because we were looking at something new, we weren’t that sure what was going to come out musically or where we would end up. The first song written was ‘Fractional Grip’; the main riff was probably the first one I actually wrote getting into the creative zone. It’s rough but I think the lyrics and especially the video helped push it into where we were going. The words “In the minds of a machine, / This is the edge of being, / In the belly of a machine”. Our futile existence, the possibility of an alien existence before our civilisation and or alongside looking on and maybe fucking with us or coming to help, which is where we went with the video.
The band name, well the Morta part is an Irish language word for bog. I added the El to personify things, making the bog them, the alien, the 10,000 year old carbon from under the soil, the alien leftover buried for ages, the trees that saw more than we could ever fathom, the darkness of the unknown.
The song ‘The Living’ is about death, watching the dying looking out and realizing they can’t talk back, the dangers of procrastination, the death of our planet, things we could have tried to help as the line says “You stare through me with those wild, vacant eyes and when I look back I hear your cries”. It’s the song where I found out too that I could sing which I found very cathartic.
I suppose people will hear the heavy Nick Cave influence too, who has a heavy influence on the three of us and has done so over the years. Melancholy is the key to happiness. ‘They Come to Me’ is the death-doom song that I guess we had to do and it’s a great song really. Up-tempo and not a typical MB song in any sense. Darren was able to try out and do some different styles of singing which worked out and made the project even more of our own.
It was a lull period in MB, Covid being a major factor, so the timing was on our side. That’s how we managed to keep the momentum going and release both Tak1 and TYKII in the same year. But then no Covid, no free time, and here we are two years later with the new one ha ha.
As for the material on TYKII, the doom song for sure that keeps our common feet on the ground is ‘Day of the Rope’, the others going off on their own journey to where El Morta is touching space dust and scooping up undersoil as it meanders around its newfound darkside of the nebulae. For a long time, I thought we rushed this release out, as I could have spent more time on the mixing/mastering but recently its claustrophobic sound has grown on me. It’s a decent middle-ground representation of where we are now.
Both EPs were released only digitally, and you released The Man Who Laughs DIY. Did you search for a proper label for the album? The ex-Mourning Beloveth label looks attractive.
I did contact labels with the previous two and then gave up, fuck it. In this day and age, it’s social media and the new digital ‘old-school’ word of mouth that make new bands. Maybe I’m wrong, I’m not completely up to date with the scene and missed almost 10 to 15 years of not being in touch with things at all. If anyone approaches us fine, if not we’ll keep having fun, which we are doing. I do think we’ll take a break though now for a while. Darren has other priorities on the horizon right now, Brian too, and I’ve an acoustic project to get off the ground, Nightsoil Collector. A collection of shit with melodies and stories to help shorten your day.
So The Man Who Laughs album title applies to Victor Hugo’s famous novel. How much of it is in the album indeed? What meaning did you put in it?
The name came from the movie/book, true. It was like a lot of the casual accidents that we’ve had over the last couple of years. We voted on ‘Devil’66’ being the song to make a video for. That song’s main riff started off as a road trip type song, So we took off for a ride down the 65 and then it got dark, Darren got the devil on board, we stopped off at a circus to check out some freaks, ate their mafia-supplied ice cream, and got back in to take a detour back via the 66. The intention with the new release was to complete the trilogy as it were. Tak1 being the disease, TYKII being the cure, and the new release being the pill to cure all ills which you will see in the two bonus tracks ‘Why the misdemeanor’ and ‘Bleed Nicely’.
But seriously, the laughing that I added (late) at the end of the song aroused curiosity to look for footage of the same and Darren recommended me to check out archive.org. I searched and The Man Who Laughs came up. It fitted and we used it, simple as that. There was never a working title for the release, the same as there wasn’t for the previous two. It was on public domain so here we are. It works.
The last line in ‘Solarat’, “Sail away my friend”, could refer to the last scene in the movie where Gwynplaine sails away to freedom and after he renounces his peerage and refuses to marry the Duchess. ‘In Ectobiidae’ there’s the line “Scare me – Must you wonder at the giant of me”, which could be a reference to the freak circus that Gwynplaine belonged to and suffered at the hands of. His only joy was the affection he got from Dea who, blind from birth, couldn’t see his horribly disfigured and garish smile. And of course ‘Devil’66’ is the ride, the freakshow, the spectacle and the disgusting fascination of us humans with the odd and the peculiar and often unfortunately misunderstood. The title is one of those coincidences that were there and felt right. It’s not a concept album so it doesn’t need reading into or be the carrot on a stick.
Do the lyrics of the two “extra” songs ‘I’ll Stand Guard’ and ‘Why the Misdemeanour’ somehow fit the same vibe as other songs do? Why did you decide to add these tracks in the end?
They do but they are open to interpretation. For ‘Why the Mmisdemeanour’ I wrote the lyrics with the intention of it being the final song on the new release. The plan was to make the 3rd release go with the concept of the ‘pill to cure or to kill’. So, it’s about euthanasia, the inability and refusal to let people finish their lives in a dignified manner. ”I’ve lived a dog’s life, so why the misdemeanor?” The original concept changed unintentionally and for the better really. ‘I’ll stand guard’ could be about someone dying. It could be Dea watching out for Gwynplaine even though she was blind and he over her too.
How did you work over this material? How much did you change since you started working on the original idea and to the final stages of mixing and mastering?
We had the bones of the 12 songs ready before April of 2023, we talked and then they both came over to Spain for a week of rehearsals and hammering out things which was fucking great! Apart from the creative side of it where we holed up in a rehearsal studio for over 10 hours every day, we got to catch up as we hadn’t seen each other properly for years. It took a year from then until now to get it all recorded, mixed and ready for release. We kept a few guide tracks from the sessions to use, but in the end everything was re-recorded in our own homes. I mixed, mastered everything here myself on my own small studio setup.
The basic arrangements were all recorded and done before December last year and then we took our time with the vocals until I got all the final mixes done by February I suppose. We then went song by song and had a look back at what we had and made choices. Things changed as regards riff placement, repeating different ones, etc., but it all started pretty soon after TYKII came out in Dec 2022 and there was a great creativity period then. There were songs with 40+ tracks, mixing was a nightmare, the computer I have is not as good as I’d like, but that will be upgraded soon so we need sales :). I remember recording the first MB demo and things have changed a lot since then. What we can do in our own homes compared to what was available in 1996 is not worth pissing on.
Do the album’s artwork and paintings from inlay complement the songs’ lyrics, or is it rather about the mood and experimental or abstract atmosphere of the album?
About the artwork. We’ll be honest here. We embraced the AI technology for this end of things. We used what came out after inputting some wording/lyrics related to each song into AI image creators and what you see is what came out. We don’t have time or resources for an artist but we can make quick decisions over Whatsapp messaging etc to use what fits and there were lots to have to choose from.
As for the band photos, I took mine here, the guys took theirs in Ireland, and Darren worked on the original shots to give them an overall common texture. To say ‘it’s the future’ would be cliché, but we are slaves to the time we don’t have to waste and the essence is sparse.
Do you have any plans to perform the album live? Did you already play it live?
That’s a big question. I would love it to happen. Logistically a nightmare though. We’d have to think about rehearsing, find a drummer, who knows. It’s not a priority but if the opportunity/offer comes, we’d surely consider it. We’ve enough for a decent set and we’ve ideas for cover versions that would work too. The only public airings it’s got so far were in the playground on the school pa where I work ha ha. I have thought about getting a live show together though, getting it recorded, and, releasing on CD and making that the only commercially available physical release for the band. So, we’ll see how that goes. It would be a one-off.
Yes, about drums. Did you program it?
Yes. I used pre-programmed loops and edited them to suit the songs and Brian programmed his from scratch. For us and our recording means, it made it easier. There was no way to get the band in physical contact regularly so this is the way. Even when they came over here to Spain for the pre-recording sessions, we used what we already had on the demos and those drummers never complain or turn up late ha ha .
Thanks for the interview, Adrian. It was good to talk, and I hope the interview will help you to promote the band a bit further. That’s all for today, would you like to add a few more words? Did we forget something?
I really appreciate you taking the time to prepare the interview. I hope people will get to hear more about us and like what we’re doing. It’s a jungle out there but somewhere under your feet as you kick the cockroaches aside, are the gems.
Keep an eye out for our next video for the track “Ectobiidae”.
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https://elmorta.bandcamp.com/album/the-man-who-laughs