One day, many years ago, I came home from work to happily find a package from a heavy metal company waiting for me that had come in the mail. My happiness turned to confusion though, making me go "what the hell is THIS?" when all this stuff fell out of the envelope when I opened it. What was all this *stuff* when all I did was either order one t-shirt or one cd?
Included with the order was free heavy metal fanzines, one of which was The Grimoire of Exhalted Deeds, quite the colorful publication there, to say the least.
The second reason I went "what the hell..." was this thing on the cover, having an obvious prosthetic nose, obviously prosthetic pointy ears, and with his arms being spread, he had bat wings as his costume.
That was Mortiis, of course, which there was an interview with him in that issue.
Sounding interesting, I went out and got his cd of Født til å Herske at a store without hearing one single note of it beforehand, having a bit of a six sense that I'm going to like something without hearing it first and I was right (I've yet to be wrong, and I don't like everything either!). I was lucky too, because even though I live in the fourth largest city in my country (Houston), I heard a radio dj say several years later we rank 16th as far as live venues, music availability and the like goes; not a real good ratio, so I was lucky to be able to get that as it was, as the only other time I saw an album of his (The Stargate) was also at a record store on that side of town, which was odd. Because the place I got Herske at was near a temp job that I was working at the time, which was like a 40 minute drive away. I never would've gone into that store if it wasn't for that due to the length of the drive. If you were into popular stuff, the only thing you needed to do back then was find the closest store with the best prices; not so much with underground stuff.
This led me to getting (through the mail) three of his four Vond cds, as well as his Cintecele Diavolui cd too. I also got Desiderii Marginnis's Songs Over Ruins (yeah I know, dark ambient rather than dungeon synth, but some artists cross over/they have a bit in common) and Swartalf's Candles Burning Blue cds.
I only got back into dungeon synth in the last year due to being on Mortiis's e-mailing list forever, letting me know about the Dungeon Siege concert last year, so I sat through that and this year's (just the other week), getting exposed to a lot of current artists that are new to me. Nice to be back, after all these years
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With the rise of Emperor in the underground thrash metal world, we all heard about how Mortiis played bass with them until he was booted out before their debut was released. So I'm sure I would have heard of him and gotten into him anyway, but who can say for sure?
So, thanks to whatever employee it was from either Nuclear Blast America or Relapse Records for putting that 'zine in my order, this is how my history with dungeon synth happened, as I could possibly have a great genre of music missing from my life if it didn't.