After his previous long running project, Meinhof broke up, Jarek felt that the void it created, the lack of ability to express himself both musically and in a message was too unbearable. So he formed a new band, raw d-beat Japenese hardcore infused Tystvar, but it wasn’t enough. Hungry for more creative endeavours, he started to think about some other form to express himself, a project that would be a kind of solo expression of his musical and lyrical expression. That’s how MORTAR got into existence.
Mortar is a natural continuation of Jarek’s path he took in the 90s with Polish crust punk band Silna Wola, fueled by Scandinavian d-beat, with all due honor to old school sound of HM-2 boss distortion pedal.
“I thought it might work as a solo project similarly to what Joel Grind is doing with Toxic Holocaust, but soon I realized, that even though I am a pretty good multi-instrumentalist I am not gonna do everything entarily on my own, so one by one I started to introduce other musicians to my project.” – says Jarek.
“I think that an important break through was inviting Nik, a Russian fella living in London since he was 12.”
MORTAR’s debut album, “Fire And Steel” is predominantly inspired by the horror of war in Ukraine.
In that regard, asked about his Russian friend, Jarek says that having Nik in the band was very educating and interesting.
“His understanding of what is happening in Russia under Putin’s tyranny, his broken soul, which I believe contributed greatly in the way he sings in Mortar.” – says Jarek.
Speaking about the other band members, Michał, Jarek continues: “Also a great contribution came from an old friend of mine, Michał who currently is leading Death Crusade but in the past he also played in Filth Of Mankind, his guitar solos added some extra dimension to the music.”
The current line-up consists of Jarek, Nik, Greg, Paweł and Rafal. MORTAR’s debut album will be (most likely) released by a legendary Polish record label, NNNW, with some details are currently negotiated as we speak.
