Glasgow metallers Mors Omnibus (Latin for Death To All) built up somewhat of a cult following in the first half of 2010 through their often unpredictable live shows, a thought-provoking & starkly honest attitude to the media & fans, & off the back of their debut recording, Demo One. And then they vanished. Zero Tolerance scribe Richard Drone caught up with the band's frontman & creative powerhouse Fudaidh as he made a trip to London.
It's been about 21 months since Mors Omnibus last rolled their eyes in public. So where exactly did they vanish to? As Fudaidh explains, it's not particularly glamorous.
"Real life often gets in the way of music unfortunately. I've articulated in the past that I feel quite strongly on the topic of treating music as a business, that it is art. Setting out to make a career from art involves too many compromises & I don't like compromise. But there are compromises that need to be made when you have a day job to fund your creativity. It means that playing anywhere outwith the central belt of Scotland is a real hassle."
"I got laid off, managed to find a new job but they weren't quite so generous in granting days off to play gigs. Lumpy and Eric...", and here Fudaidh rolls his eyes while smirking at the sheer bloody mindedness of ex-bass player Lumpy Baboon's chosen moniker. They wanted to play more often and so they've moved on to other things, Eric's playing guitar with Arc of the Covenant now, Lumpy has abandoned his pseudonym & is involved in another Edinburgh based group, not playing metal. Irruminator stayed true to the cause though, the drummer is back for the second stab at ruining music. So what exactly persuaded them to try again?
"Ego. I try to be a pretty private guy, hence the robes and the propensity for stupid masks. I want to seperate Fudaidh the rather eccentric, confrontational smart-arse from me to a certain degree. The music is all mine, from me and completely sincere but it's very extreme, very intense, and I can't be that guy all the time. This is why I have the pseudonym, and why the rest of the band have them too. I'm not ashamed of what I do, but I need a certain amount of seperation from it sometimes. My real identity can come out when I'm dead."
And could that happen sooner than you might expect? "Well, that's one of the things that's kept everything on hold for so long aside from the daily grind. Life is complex, it has its ups and downs for everyone but we don't all deal with them in the same way. I may have had a couple of mini-breakdowns which could be one factor that contributed to the band's long hiatus. That seems to be over for the time being and I have no real intentions of dying anytime soon. Not the sort of thing I'm totally comfortable talking about face-to-face to be honest with you, so I'll just say that my experiences have influenced my song-writing and we'll leave it at that."
The last major question is what comes next for Mors Omnibus? They may have lost half the live band but Fudaidh already has replacements in place. "We've got two new members for the live shows, going by the names of Abharsair and Greim-Bàis on bass and guitar respectively. Both have plenty experience playing live in various styles of music, both are committed to the aesthetic and I for one am excited to get to reign down on the free world with them and Irruminator. He wanted to join in on the Gaelic naming conventions, but it could have seemed like he'd left the band so he stays as he is to avoid confusion. We're hitting the studio in March, then fucking off onto the road as soon as we have some new tracks done. There's some new stuff that's been written, I quite like the idea of reworking...updating at least one track off Demo One, and I'd also rather foolishly and self-indulgently like to see if we can rework 'London Is A City Full Of Cunts That I Would Like To See Die' from our thoroughly shambolic performance at Animal Fest. We'll see if we can put it together in a form that works on record, but it's difficult to tell right now."
"After we're done in the studio, which honestly shouldn't take us more than 3 days, we're not really aiming for perfection, we've got a handful of shows lined up in Glasgow. So come along and see us supporting Jesu Cunt on the 18th March at Nice 'n' Sleazys, Arson At Eight on the 22nd at ABC2 and Cosmonaut on the 24th at the 13th Note. Or don't. It's not for everyone, in fact maybe it's not anyone."
Edited by user 08 December 2012 08:54:47(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified
