HOLISSSTIK - Chapter 1: This Endless Solitude

Some albums try to transcend genre boundaries, while others reject the power of those boundaries to define music in the first place. With “Chapter 1: This Endless Solitude,” Tor-Helge Skei’s HOLISSSTIK brings the legacy of black metal into the same compositional space as electronic textures, trip-hop rhythms, rock, ambient music, and different vocal traditions, creating a cross-genre structure. By turning the free contributions of roughly twenty musicians into parts of a single whole, the album places diversity not as ornamentation, but directly at the center of its compositional and arranging logic.

What connects the album’s tracks is not the rules of any particular genre, but Tor-Helge Skei’s approach to reshaping sound. Initially taking form mostly as instrumental sketches, the eight compositions expand through the involvement of roughly twenty guests without losing their fundamental structures; electronic layers, guitars, bass, drums, different vocal techniques, and multiple languages interlock within the same compositional space. The real point here is not simply to stack different genres on top of one another. Skei seeks to turn markedly different materials into parts of the same dramatic flow, and this is precisely where the album’s greatest strength emerges.

The risk inherent in this approach is obvious. With electronic, trip-hop, jazz, ambient, rock, metal, and pop elements circulating within the same framework, unrestricted guest contributions could easily have resulted in an eclectic collage. “Chapter 1: This Endless Solitude” largely avoids that trap. Skei holds all songwriting and arranging credits, while also retaining control over the recording, production, and mixing. Consequently, the guests’ individual touches never replace the compositions themselves; they become new layers built onto the framework Skei had already established.

This is particularly evident in the use of guitars. Eivind Fjøseide’s guitars, which appear across most of the album, do not consistently serve the riff-centered function they would on a conventional metal record. Instead, the guitar becomes an element positioned within electronic textures and vocal layers, sometimes expanding the harmonic space and sometimes defining the tension within a track. “Behind Me” offers a more concrete example. Christophe Denhez’s guitars and vocals, together with Eivind Fjøseide’s guitars, bring the track’s more rock-oriented side into sharper focus, while Torstein Parelius’ bass does more than simply support the material from underneath; it fills the spaces between the guitar and vocal layers, giving the track its physical body.

“Would You Take This Heart” takes a different approach. Trond Johansen’s guitars and Stig Waltoft’s synths and sounds intensify the track without turning it directly into a metal composition. The electronic component is not left as a decorative effect; instead, it places the physical texture carried by the guitar against a more abstract sonic space. Kristoffer Oustad’s synth work serves a similar function on “The Rhythm of Silence,” “Projections,” “Reoccuring Dreams,” and the title track. In particular, the synth opening of “Reoccuring Dreams” shows that Skei has not entirely abandoned his connection to his earlier black metal aesthetic. Yet rather than developing into a conventional black metal song, the reference emerges from within an electronic atmosphere.

The rhythm section is likewise crucial to the album’s transitions between genres. Tor-Arne Helgesen’s drumming on the tracks other than “Behind Me” and “This Endless Solitude” moves the material between different levels of intensity rather than constantly pushing it toward metallic heaviness. Rune Hoemsnes’ drumming on “Behind Me,” meanwhile, carries a character suited to the track’s more organic, rock-oriented construction. This distinction matters because HOLISSSTIK’s rhythmic logic is less about changing genres than redefining the physical weight each track requires. Metal here is not an identity label so much as one of the sonic resources at Skei’s disposal.

The vocals are the layer that makes the project’s collective nature most visible. Martyna Halas, Marita Hellem, Anna Murphy, Gabriel Trentini, Tom Engelsøy, Nik Košar, Pierre Ripka, and Rune Folgerø do not offer different versions of the same vocal aesthetic. On the contrary, their approaches directly alter the character of the tracks. There is a clear difference between Halas carrying “My Salvation” as its sole vocalist and her layered appearances on “Would You Take This Heart” and “This Endless Solitude.” Hellem’s clearer vocal tone and Murphy’s controlled, melodic approach on “Obsession Six,” meanwhile, make the album’s electronic and atmospheric side more accessible.

“Obsession Six” is one of the strongest examples of this vocal diversity. Anna Murphy’s vocals fill the track’s sense of emptiness with a melodic line, while Tom Engelsøy’s contributions provide a more mysterious and tense counterpoint. Gabriel Trentini’s harsh vocals do more than simply thicken these layers; they sharpen the tonal and textural contrast within the track. His decision to explore clean vocals here also prevents his voice from being confined to a single extreme-vocal role. By bringing these different voices closer together in the mix, Skei makes “Obsession Six” one of the tracks that best articulates the album’s cross-genre logic.

“The Rhythm of Silence,” meanwhile, demonstrates how the album’s lyrical and sonic architecture are connected. The lyrics by Martyna Halas and Pierre Ripka are built around the tension between physical intimacy and isolation. The fragile, direct delivery of Halas’ English sections stands in sharp contrast to Ripka’s French rap performance. The rap section does not feel as though it was added simply to showcase another genre; by shifting the vocal perspective, it also transforms the rhythmic structure of the narrative. The separation of the French flow from the English vocal line turns the album’s concept of “the whole” from an abstract statement into something embedded directly within the composition.

The same approach can be heard in the album’s use of language. Polish, Italian, French, and Pali are added to a predominantly English-language framework. Had this diversity been used solely to create atmosphere, it could easily have become an exotic embellishment. Yet because different vocal characters and modes of expression are already integrated into the arrangements, the shifts between languages also create compositional variation. The chanting of the Paritta monks on “Would You Take This Heart” is a more extreme example. While the use of chanting nods toward the ritualistic aesthetics of metal, it functions within the track’s electronic and vocal layers as a new rhythmic and tonal color.

HOLISSSTIK’s approach to genre is therefore more interesting than a simple claim to be “genreless.” The atmospheric legacy of black metal, trip-hop’s rhythmic distance, ambient music’s use of space, jazz’s flexibility, rock’s directness, and the programmed textures of electronic music all occupy the same plane on the album. Yet none of them defines its core identity on its own. The cross-genre approach Skei developed with MANES during the “Vilosophe” era evolves here into something more collective and open-ended. In this respect, HOLISSSTIK is less about expanding extreme metal’s genre boundaries than demonstrating how unnecessary those boundaries can become from a compositional standpoint.

Still, not every one of the album’s experimental decisions is equally transformative. Some synths, sound effects, and vocal layers directly alter the direction of the compositions, while others primarily deepen the atmosphere. This distinction matters because the success of “Chapter 1: This Endless Solitude” does not lie in the sheer variety of its materials, but in how much of that variety produces structural consequences. Fortunately, the album’s underlying arranging logic is strong enough beneath its surface differences that even elements which remain decorative never acquire enough weight to disrupt the overall architecture.

Production is the second major pillar of that architecture. Recorded, produced, and mixed by Skei, the album does not respond to its increasing number of layers by constantly filling the frequency spectrum. Instead, it pushes some details into the background, delaying the point at which certain sounds become perceptible. This approach is particularly apparent in the vocal effects and electronic layers. Rather than revealing every sound on first listen, hiding some of them within the mix supports the album’s reliance on repeated listening. Knut V. Prytz’s mastering likewise preserves the overall balance that prevents this layered construction from ultimately becoming a single dense block.

What matters here more than the production simply sounding “big” is the relationship between open and closed spaces. Some sections of the album deliberately preserve gaps between sound sources, while at other moments vocals, synths, guitars, and rhythmic elements are layered into the same space. These shifts in density allow the tracks to develop dramatically without relying solely on tempo or riff changes. The album’s ability to change direction without undergoing major rhythmic or melodic transformations therefore rests largely on the interaction between mixing and arrangement.

Consider the different vocal layers of “The Rhythm of Silence,” the contrasting vocal characters of “Obsession Six,” and the multi-vocal arrangement of the title track, and Skei’s principal compositional achievement becomes clearer. In a project built around the unrestricted contributions of roughly twenty people, the result is not a sterile unity achieved by sanding away the individuality of its guests. On the contrary, the different contributions remain audible; none of them, however, takes control of the album’s overall flow. This is where the real test of collective creation is passed.

The title track is the most concentrated example of this method. As Martyna Halas, Marita Hellem, and Rune Folgerø’s vocals are layered by Skei, Torstein Parelius’ bass and lyrical contribution provide the composition with a more tangible foundation. The way Halas’ lyrics and Parelius’ contributions are arranged to answer one another within the same textual structure turns the album’s central idea—that its individual parts cannot be considered separately from the whole—into a direct formal decision. Here, the vocals do more than carry the melody; they also reshape the narrative structure of the track.

The cover art is by Adrien Bousson. Since the available sources provide no detailed explanation of the album’s visual identity, it is more appropriate to regard the artwork not as a direct representation of specific themes in the music, but as a complementary part of HOLISSSTIK’s broader artistic approach. After all, the project’s strength lies in building a multilayered structure through sound itself rather than establishing its identity through a single symbol or visual aesthetic.

Explaining “Chapter 1: This Endless Solitude” solely through labels such as experimental electronic music, avant-garde metal, or post-black metal would unnecessarily narrow the way the album operates. More meaningful is the way Skei combines the control of atmosphere and intensity he developed through extreme metal with electronic production, different vocal traditions, and a free-form collaborative model. The experimentation here comes not from the number of sound sources involved, but from the way those sources interact within a composition without a strict hierarchy.

For that reason, the album does not behave like an easily consumable genre exercise. It asks the listener to follow the relationships between its layers rather than “solve” each track individually. The ways in which vocal performances, electronic textures, and guitars move toward and away from one another bring details that may go unnoticed on first listen to the foreground later. There is, however, an important consequence to this approach: even though the album has accessible elements, its real character is determined less by surface-level melodies than by its layers of arrangement and production.

The first chapter of HOLISSSTIK therefore does more than repeat Skei’s previous explorations across genre boundaries; it places them within a looser model of collective creation. The freedom granted to the guests does not fracture the album but instead heightens the points of tension within its compositions. Electronic and organic sounds do not neutralize one another; the guitars retain their metal identity while being placed in a different context; and the vocals become the album’s most pronounced formal variable. The central claim of “Chapter 1: This Endless Solitude” lies precisely here: holding different parts together without making them the same. Skei’s achievement is not so much in eliminating boundaries as in refusing to let those boundaries determine the structure of the music.

Official website: https://www.holissstik.com/

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