Tor-Helge Skei: „I’m quite whimsical, impulsive and weird“
Calling the Norwegian Black-Metal legend Tor-Helge Skei “prolific” might be an understatement: As Cernunnus (or Cern), he started Manes in 1992 as a side-project of Atrox, a band he was playing in back then. Lethe is another well-known Black Metal project of this multi-instrumentalist (guitars, keyboards, programming). And Tor reveals that there is more coming up:
How did you get involved with music? Did you study music formally, Tor?
No, never studied it, never been interested in anything related to music theory or academia. That’s a recipe for disaster and generic, heard-it-a-million-times-before boring music. To me, music is all about emotions and letting your mind wander… anything taking away from that ruins it for me.
Could you tell us about being in Lethe and about your project “Alienation” with Anna Murphy? What inspired you to create?
Yeah… Alienation is the third album from Lethe, a project we have had going for, well, around 10 years now? It’s sometimes a bit hard to find time and motivation to focus on projects like these, as both me and Anna has a lot of stuff going on, both related to music and in private life. This third album was mainly put together during the covid ‘pestilence’, but since that had quite a big impact on traveling and stuff, there was a bit problematic getting it finished. But we finally did, and I’m pretty satisfied with the result…
It’s been pretty interesting, yet another way of thinking about music. Anna is a bit more ‘professional’ than me, thinking about sound and production and stuff, while I’m quite whimsical, impulsive and weird… I like sounds that makes me take notice, freaks me out, or hypnotizes me, almost… but she brings some of it back ‘down to earth’ again, and makes it work sonically, hehe. Nice combination, and I like the results. Time will tell if there will be more Lethe albums…
What was it like being in Manes?
Eh, I am still in Manes.. ‘Neo-Manes’ 🙂 We released an EP a while ago (“Pathei Mathos”), and there’s an album coming out soon, called “To Burn Is To Shine”, and will come out on Avantgarde Records. Everything is ready, it was mixed and mastered last year, and now we’re working on the cover artwork… expect something darker than the previous albums.
Could you tell us about another project The Holos Collective?
Yeah, again a new project, because I am not satisfied with how things are going with other projects. I am extremely restless and impulsive, and if a project stops, or comes to a halt, I jump ship easily. But this time I wanted to do things very differently, focus more on collaborations and contributions.. I created a bunch of what I call ‘sketches’.. simple song demos, like starting points, and then asked people to contribute, to add their stuff, guide the songs to the next level, kind of.. and now I’m ‘play-pretend’ producer, and trying to make sense of everything, to make it all fit together as one, coherent thing. I’m working on the first album, “chapter 1”, that will be released early next year on These Hands Melt records. I’m very close to finishing it… you will hear more about it in autumn.
Any favorite music artists?
Aahh… not sure.. I have some artists I like a lot, in various genres… for electronic music, I really like Shpongle, Venetian Snares, Brothomstates, Boards of Canada… all very different, but unique in their own way. For metal, I mostly enjoy the older stuff, as most of the modern things are pretty generic and ‘heard it a million times before’… I like 4-track period Darkthrone, the oldest Burzum, Mayhem’s de mysteriis, some Celtic Frost.
How do you view today’s Black Metal scene?
Not too positively, a lot of generic stuff, without much individualism or personal ideas, everything is rehashed and repeated ad nauseam, so I don’t listen much to new stuff..
Are you interested in occult subjects?
Nah, not too much. I don’t like fantasy much, real life has more than enough darkness and despair.
Do you like collaborating with other artists?
Absolutely! I’m not sure I have ever released any album or music without collaborating with other people… all the different people and artists makes it interesting, all projects working in different ways, with different goals.
Any future plans and projects for you, Tor?
Gazillions! I plan new albums with several of the more ‘metallic’ projects… Manii, Syning, Høstsol. But at the moment I focus on The Holos Collective, to get that album done, and lay down the foundation for the next one… then I’ll se what I want to do.
Text: John Wisniewski photos: Tor-Helge Skei
More about the artist HERE
