The Great Deceiver, the long-awaited ninth album from Norway's Mortiis, is officially released today, March 4th via Omnipresence, and a video for the album track "Demons Are Back" has been revealed in conjunction.

The Great Deceiver's long and tortured state of evolution took its toll equally on the band and its namesake, leading Mortiis to so much as state that the record killed the band. "As important as is it to myself and who I have become, I haven't been able to think about it in any way other than 'I need to just get this thing out of my life and behind me before I lose my mind,'" he said.

Saturated with themes of anger, greed, confusion, self-doubt and re-discovery, The Great Deceiver is undoubtedly Mortiis' most mature album to date. But that maturity came at a great cost mentally. "When we started talking about it and writing the record, we were a band, we had two managements, merch deals and tours were happening," Mortiis said. "During the course of the writing, recording, re-writing, and re-recording, we lost the connection with almost everyone. There were fallings out with band members to the point where we had to let them go. It was usually about delusion and defeat, the realization of being f**ked with and not getting the recognition deserved. It was never pretty, but in hindsight always understandable.

"I have been accused of being a lot of things: self-centered, manipulative, unstable, hot- headed, paranoid, the list goes on. Most everyone I have spent some time with have had beefs with me. They´re all right, too...it's the price of being driven and passionate - or just narrow minded and obsessive - about something is often the loss of friends and colleagues."

The Great Deceiver builds on Mortiis' past dabbling in metal and industrial, with aggressive guitar-driven crossover metal meeting industrial-type electronics. Although genre-defying, The Great Deceiver is Mortiis' most accessible release to date.

With its hauntingly memorable chorus, "Demons Are Back" is a perfect example of this accessibility, while also providing an overall narrative for the album.

"Anger, resentment...I hate everyone," the band's namesake said. "These feelings are like waves. During the 'good times' they are far away in the distance, and occasionally they come washing ashore in huge waves of 'I hate everyone.' It's a thin line between being in sync with the world and wanting to annihilate everyone you see. 'Demons are Back' is a conflicted song, in the sense that I let both sides in, or out, and both voices are heard. It's therapeutic in a sense, and in another sense it is chaotic and confusing. But, again, I try to create some sort of positivity in the harangue of spitefulness. It's really down to the logical, sensible me, telling the disturbed, pessimistic me to chill out."

The video shows a grotesquely-masked voyeur watching dystopian scenes of utter despair, sadism and eventually, suicide through an array of TV screens, as his own life ends violently. "The mask was inspired partly by a very violent dream I once had," said Mortiis. "The violence was absolutely relentless."

The clip uses scenes from writer/director Charlie Deaux's Zoetrope, a film based upon Franz Kafka's In the Penal Colony. At the suggestion of Deaux, whom Mortiis previously work with on "The Grudge" video, the band spent a day in Oslo filming additional footage to splice in with images from the original film. With a minimal set and crew - guitarist Levi Gawron acting as directing and Mortiis himself handling special effects - the band captured original scenes that seamlessly compliment those from Zoetrope in frantic stop-motion created by Deaux himself.

The Great Deceiver album details, as well as a full stream of the album, can be found below.

Tracklislting:

“The Great Leap”
“The Ugly Truth”
“Doppelganger”
“Demons Are Back”
“Hard To Believe”
“Road To Ruin”
“Bleed Like You”
“Scalding The Burnt”
“The Shining Lamp Of God”
“Sins Of Mine”
“Feed The Greed”
“Too Little Too Late”

Album stream:

“The Shining Lamp Of God” video:

“Doppelganger” video:

Mortiis will be returning to UK shores for a run of seven headline shows in May. The tour kicks off at Newcastle’s Cluny venue on May 23rd and commences at Bristol’s Fleece on May 29th.

The band comments: ”It’s about time we came back to the UK for some shows. See you in May, you bastards.”

Tour dates:

May
23 - Newcastle, UK - Cluny
24 - Glasgow, UK - Audio
25 - Manchester, UK - Ruby
26 - Birmingham, UK - O2 Institute
27 - Brighton, UK - Haunt
28 - London, UK - Garage
29 - Bristol, UK - Fleece

Tickets are on sale now at this location.