MORTAL SIN came back this year after nearly fifteen years away, and vocalist Mat Maurer now puts the odds of new music at 95 percent.
Speaking to Heavy, Maurer was candid about what the reunion had to clear first. "We've got offers for some festivals for next year, some really big festivals," he said. "We had a good time. We didn't kill each other. We enjoyed each other's company. We looked out for each other. Yeah, so we'll definitely keep going. Whether we write new music or not, that's to be discussed, which it's probably 95% that we will."
The decision has a date attached, more or less. "We've been so busy that we haven't really had time to sit down and talk about what's next," he said. "So once we do these FLOTSAM AND JETSAM shows, we'll do that. We'll sit down, maybe around Christmas time, have a bit of a Christmas dinner all together and sort of reflect on what we did and talk about what we can do." The FLOTSAM AND JETSAM dates run across Australia in late September and early October.
Maurer is realistic about where the band stands with an audience that has moved on. "The tour in Europe this year was kind of like a bit of a taster," he said. "We need to let people know that we're back again. It's gonna take time. So next year, maybe getting on some bigger festivals, hopefully getting back on Wacken. Even though we've got a decent profile to start with, we've gotta start again. A lot of people still don't know that we're back. I've seen a few forums here and there where people still sort of talk in past tense: 'Oh, yeah, MORTAL SIN were really good.'"
On writing something that lives up to fifteen years of waiting, he is unbothered by the premise. "It's the same for every single band. You've just gotta hope that you write something that they'll love. And the main part of that is you write what you love. We've just gotta write a MORTAL SIN song, and that's pretty much it." The lyrics are the part he finds hard. "Is it gonna be a leap year apart, or is it gonna be a closeness to the last album, or is it gonna be a mix of everything? Who knows, man? We just chuck everything into a pot, mix it up, see what happens."
The 2026 lineup pairs original members Maurer and bassist Andy Eftichiou with guitarists Nathan Shea and Ryan Huthnance, plus Sydney drummer George Delinicolis of LIVEWIRE and BASTARDIZER. They played their first show in over fourteen years on January 31 at Froth & Fury in Adelaide, toured Australia in March, and returned to Europe in August for Brutal Assault, Alcatraz and headline dates across Poland, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
The year is an anniversary pile-up: forty years of "Mayhemic Destruction", twenty of "An Absence Of Faith", fifteen since "Psychology Of Death" — their last album, released in November 2011 on NoiseArt. Once tipped as the next METALLICA, MORTAL SIN remain the only Australian band to have toured with all of METALLICA, SLAYER, ANTHRAX, MEGADETH and TESTAMENT.