Warthur
Set aside any preconceptions you might have about Mortiis' music from his solo career up to this point. It's here that he abandoned the strange, lo-fi outsider art Dungeons & Dragons soundtracks that he had turned into a subgenre of its own in the 1990s and shifts to a somewhat generic sounding but surprisingly competently executed electronic goth rock style. After this album the "Mortiis" project would become a band affair, and backed by a competent set of musicians Mortiis is actually quite successful at making the transition to this musical style.
Is he a bit like Marilyn Manson in a troll mask? Well, perhaps, and certainly his surprisingly wimpy vocals and lyrics make him sound like a self-pitying teenager, but everyone feels self-pitying sometimes and this album certainly resonates with that. In addition, there's an interesting thematic strand running through the lyrics which suggests that The Smell of Rain is a concept album about the godlike entity ruling over fantasyland that Mortiis sang about in his earlier career, having returned to reality and lost his Dungeon Master powers and having to deal with being a grown-ass man in the mundane world, which is rather fun to keep track of. Not what I'd call a classic album, but an interesting one certainly, though to be honest it's a little too generic to be anything other than a footnote in the history of the genre that Mortiis was trying to work his way into here.