Each Measure Feature: Mortez

FEATURE

In responding to questions from Apple Music about her musical influences, Rachele Royale, the emboldened vocalist of the LA-based rock group Mortez, cited Tori Amos as an influence, specifically calling out Tales of a Librarian as a significant touchpoint. And sure enough, in that collection’s opening track, Precious Things, we find the musical root of what musicians Rachele Royale and Brett Daniels would synthesize in Mortez’s single, Down with the Devil.

Like its musical predecessor, Down with the Devil depicts the narrator’s determination to cast off the weight of temptation threatening to stifle them in their pursuit of higher values. Like any good pop song, it is economical in its lyricism, managing to succinctly convey a message while remaining universally approachable through its efficient use of familiar images.

Nowhere is this deftness more on display than in the song’s pre-chorus, where two couplets manage to deliver the weight of the song’s message:

Yeah, I see the light / But I feel the heat / Halo catching fire / I won’t take defeat

I love the image of a halo on fire, as it effectively conveys the threats posed to the best intentions of anyone attempting to maintain their dignity in a brutal and cutthroat society.

The religious imagery doesn’t end with halos. Demons, hellfire, heaven, holy ground—these are all symbols in our modern vernacular that evoke a sense of warfare, alluding to the gravity of the narrator’s grappling for purity and peace.

The music, too, depicts a bloody battlefield, where we can imagine a war being waged for someone’s soul. We hear crunchy guitars, metal-style rumbling drum and bass, a pounding piano, and even an effectively distorted vocal delivery. All of these elements coalesce to form a picture of an individual fighting for their life. Yet Mortez, in their composition of such an epic piece, stand victorious over the battleground, ready to take on the world.

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