In August 1994, I read a review of a mini-album titled “Sorrow” by a Norwegian band with the strange name The 3rd and the Mortal in the German Heavy Metal magazine Heavy, oder was!? and it sounded very interesting. I was lucky to find a copy in a record store and immediately bought it. The first song started with very interesting percussion work, and after a long build-up, finally the angelic clean vocals of Kari Rueslåtten set in, singing in Norwegian (a language I didn’t understand back then), and it was love at first listen! Only a month later, I bought the full-length album “Tears Laid in Earth” which I loved even more and which I still consider the best album of its kind, a style I’d call atmospheric Doom Metal with heavenly female vocals.
Unfortunately already in 1995, Kari Rueslåtten had left the band to start a solo career. While I also did enjoy her first two solo records (“Demo Recordings 1995” and the official debut album “Spindelsinn”) as well as the albums The 3rd and the Mortal released afterwards (with different vocalists), the latter going into a more experimental and also electronic direction, before they called it quits after their final album “Project Bluebook” about 10 years later, neither came close to the magic and atmosphere they had created together on “Sorrow” and “Tears Laid in Earth”.
While I already did get to hear a few songs from “Tears Laid in Earth” performed live by Kari Rueslåtten, yet with different musicians, when she toured together with former The Gathering-vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen and former Theatre of Tragedy-vocalist Liv Kristine as The Sirens in 2014, it was still not the same as hearing the original. A review of The Sirens’ concert at the Metal Female Voices Fest 2014 can be found here:
Therefore, it was a very positive surprise when somewhere in 2024, I read an announcement that on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of “Sorrow” and “Tears Laid in Earth”, Kari Rueslåtten had re-united with the other original members of The 3rd and the Mortal to play concerts at which they would perform songs from both releases. While the concerts they played in 2025 were too far away for me, I was very happy when I found out that they would finally also play a concert in Germany, at the Prophecy Festival, which was less than a 2-hour-car-drive for me.
While buying a festival-ticket for 165 Euros might seem a bit pricey when you are only interested in one specific band, I decided that in this case, it was worth it. Who knows if I’ll ever get another chance to see the original line-up live and what it might cost then? (Later on, there were also tickets for single days available which cost “only” 99 Euros.)
The 3rd and the Mortal were to play on the last day of the festival, which was a Saturday, thus I didn’t have to take any holidays to attend the concert and I didn’t have to worry about arriving tired at work the next morning, either.
Once the running order of each day was announced, I also knew that they were the second last act to play on that day and that their set was to start at 10:15 pm. When I arrived at the venue about 6 pm and got to the check-in, I immediately got into an interesting conversation with two guys responsible for the check-in. Since the festival had already started two days before and most people had already checked in before, there wasn’t that much to do for them, though there were still a few people who arrived even later than I did. It seemed we were around the same age, so we could get a bit nostalgic and talk about some memories of Heavy Metal in the 80s and some of our faves. Since I wasn’t too eager to get inside the venue at this time, because I knew that the bands playing before The 3rd and the Mortal were not my cup of tea, this conversation was a welcome distraction for me.
The venue of the festival was very special, because it was a cave, the Balver Höhle (Balve Cave). The main stage had been erected in the huge entrance of the cave with the stage facing towards the audience inside the cave.
Click on the images to view them in full size.
After a soundcheck and with a slight delay, The 3rd and the Mortal began their set with the perfect opening track, namely “Grevinnens bønn” (“The Countess’ Prayer”). It was the perfect opening, because it’s also the first track on their debut EP “Sorrow” and it already set the atmosphere for the entire concert. It’s one of only 3 songs by them with Norwegian lyrics and my favourite song on “Sorrow”. What I noticed right from the beginning was that the live sound was perfect, because in spite of my ear-plugs, it was about as clear and clean as on their albums. Unfortunately, I’ve experienced it more than once at metal concerts that there was a nearly constant droning noise, seemingly coming from the bass, which made it impossible to really enjoy the concert, but it luckily didn’t happen during this concert.
Already the second song “Death-Hymn” was an absolute highlight for me, because it is not only my favourite on “Tears Laid in Earth”, but also my overall favourite song by The 3rd and the Mortal. It’s also one of only 3 songs by them which Kari Rueslåtten had performed with The Sirens 12 years ago, but this time I could finally hear it with the original line-up. On the internet, you do find what seems to be an old live-recording of this song and a few others in a TV-studio (from the time before Kari left the band, thus also with the original line-up), but the sound and picture quality of this recording is unfortunately rather poor. Even though I had the impression that Kari didn’t sing the highest parts as high as she did 32 years ago, the live performance of “Death-Hymn” was fantastic.
The next song “Autopoéma” (the title “Atupoéma” on the backcover of “Tears Laid in Earth” is a misspelling) was another beautiful song, followed by another song from their debut EP, “Ring of Fire”.
The band continued with “Salva Me” from “Tears Laid in Earth” before playing “Silently I Surrender”, the closing track of their debut EP which I like nearly as much as “Grevinnens bønn”.
“Trial of Past”, an instrumental piece, offered Kari the opportunity to change clothes.
Next came “Song”, which might be the most “quiet” song on “Tears Laid in Earth”, absolutely beautiful! “Shaman” has vocals, but no lyrics, and one could say that it conveys, as the title already suggests, some kind of trance-like mood.
“Vandring” is the rather short a capella opening of “Tears Laid in Earth” and another one of only 3 songs by The 3rd and the Mortal with Norwegian lyrics – the third one, “Lengsel”, was not played at this concert.
The second last song of the set was “Why So Lonely”, another song which Kari had also performed at her concerts with The Sirens 12 years ago.
(A little excursion: “Why So Lonely” was also the first song by The 3rd and the Mortal a certain Tuomas Holopainen had heard on a Finnish metal radio programme late in 1994 which made him buy “Tears Laid in Earth”. In a videoclip about five albums which are very important to him, he states that “Tears Laid in Earth” is his all time number one record, because without this album there would be no Nightwish. Originally, Tuomas had planned to go into a similar musical direction as The 3rd and the Mortal, but when he heard Tarja singing, he realized that her voice simply didn’t fit with this type of music, since it was far too powerful. This explains why Nightwish sound completely different from The 3rd and the Mortal. In 2016, when Nightwish played in Trondheim, where The 3rd and the Mortal hail from, Tuomas got to meet the original line-up of the band who hadn’t seen each other for a long time, something the organizer of Nightwish’s concert had arranged for as a surprise for Tuomas.)
Since The 3rd and the Mortal had started their set with the opening track of their first EP “Sorrow”, it did make sense that they finished their set with the final track on “Tears Laid in Earth”, the epic “Oceana”, which is, by far, their longest track – the album version is nearly 19 minutes long. The live version was a few minutes shorter, which I think was a good idea. Not because I dislike long songs, but to end this song in a live setting the same way as it ends on the studio album, they would have had to resort to samples. I have never read anything about this, but to my ears, the last 2-3 minutes of the studio version sound like several layers of parts of the opening a capella piece “Vandring” being played backwards. It’s a bit weird and thinking about it, I would have preferred a proper ending. This is what they did with the live version. “Oceana” itself is like some kind of journey taking different turns and if it wasn’t for the weird ending of the studio version, I’d put it on par with “Death-Hymn”. The last lines “Cold winter nights, I walk upon the frozen earth. The moon lights my way, the Northwind embraces me, tells me to go on” always conjure up a picture of this exact scenery.
Even though I consider both “Sorrow” and “Tears Laid in Earth” what I call headphones-albums, thus albums I (nearly) exclusively listen to with headphones and my eyes closed in order to fully concentrate on/dive deep into the music discovering all the fine details and different guitar lines – the line-up features three guitarists -, these songs also worked perfectly in this live-setting.
I also found the positioning of the musicians on stage interesting. Kari as the vocalist in the middle of the front row was, of course, nothing special, nor was the drummer behind her, but instead of having the bassist and the three guitarists also in the front line or hiding the bassist in the back, the bassist and only one guitarist were sharing the front row with Kari, whereas the other two guitarists – occasionally, one of them also played keyboards – were positioned in one line with the drummer, one on the left and one on the right side.
I don’t know how many people watched The 3rd and the Mortal’s concert – I’d guess at least a higher 3-digit-number – and how many of them already were familiar with their music, but judging by the response after the concert, it seemed they enjoyed it a lot, and the band also looked very happy.
I’m very thankful that 32 years after the release of their first two records, I eventually got the chance to hear most of the songs, including my overall favourites, being performed live. The only 3 songs not played live were “Sorrow” (the shortest song on “Sorrow”, on which Kari is only accompanied by an acoustic guitar), “Lengsel” (the second shortest song on “Tears Laid in Earth”, on which Kari is only accompanied by bass guitar) and “In Mist Shrouded”.
Since I had got the CD-booklets of “Sorrow” and “Tears Laid in Earth” already signed by Kari after her performance with The Sirens at the Metal Female Voices Fest in Belgium in 2014, I had hoped to get them also signed by the other musicians. There was no official signing session by The 3rd and the Mortal, but while I was still having a conversation with one of the guys at the check before the concert, I noticed at one point a group of several guys and one woman coming from the hotel right beside the cave. While I wouldn’t have recognized anyone of the guys, since the last time I had seen them (with different vocalists) was more than 20 years ago and since they all looked different now, I thought I did recognize Kari – the last time I had seen her live was 9 years ago at a solo concert in Frankfurt -, but somehow, I didn’t react fast enough and before I could approach them, they had disappeared into the cave. It was still about more than an hour before their concert was to start, but finding a specific person inside the cave was a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. After having made one round through the cave without success, I gave it another try and eventually, not too far away from the mixing board, I spotted a fan talking to a woman which looked like Kari. Since the music from the band playing on stage was so loud, having a proper conversation was impossible, but I eventually got the chance to address Kari and ask her to sign three pics which were a part of different collages I had made of pics I had taken of different Norwegian vocalists. In order to give something back, I had brought along some concert pictures I had taken of the Norwegian singer/songwriter Kari Bremnes, one of them also signed, since I know that Kari Rueslåtten also likes Kari Bremnes and has seen her live before. I was also lucky that at least 4 of the other 5 members of The 3rd and the Mortal were standing nearby, thus they could sign the CD-booklets of “Sorrow” and “Tears Laid in the Earth”. So in the end, everything went as planned. Well, it would have been nice to have a little conversation with Kari and the guys – it would have been an opportunity to practice my Norwegian, though they all do, of course, speak English -, but inside the cave with another band playing, it was simply too loud.
– Burkhard – 09/2026