Vond - Selvmord (1995)

Absolutely one of my all-time favorite creations from Haavard "Mortiis" Ellefsen is his 1995 debut release for his side project, Vond, which carried the title, 'Selvmord' (Norwegian word for Suicide).

Apparently at the time of recording this album Haavard was going through some dark times due a lack of money and because of his crazed living arrangements with his girlfriend & her family and had contemplated suicide over all of this. Regardless of Haavard’s poor mental condition at the time he managed to record this album in a mere two days.

In a lot of ways this first Vond album shows parallels to the first three Mortiis albums, yet the difference was that Vond wasn’t medieval driven ambient music. ‘Selvmord’ was basically very dark and bleak ambient styled music with gorgeous melodies and occasional spoken vocals here and there. On the other hand there were some characteristics present in this album that would foreshadow the future of this particular project and all of Haavard’s projects in general. For example at times the album does hold a slight darkwave feeling to it, which is more of what the second Vond album, 'The Dark River' was like. Also at times you can find some brief upbeat melodies that remind me more of the songs on his Fata Morgana project.

However, Selvmord lives up to its name as the bulk of this album is quite ominous, depressive and desperate sounding throughout its forty plus minute duration. On a side note I also thought the cover artwork portraying Haavard about to slice his girlfriends neck to be really brilliant. Even though I guess it contradicts the albums title.

Allegedly Haavard once stated Vond would one day take a turn towards hard driven industrial rock music, though of course we all know his Mortiis project eventually took on this sound, much to my disappointment of course, but not all musicians are destined to remain brilliant forever.

As a fan of just about everything Haavard created during the 90's I can easily say this is one of his most well crafted and expressive releases ever. Selvmord was re-released by Karmageddon Media in 2004, so it shouldn't be too hard to hunt down a copy nowadays.