There's something refreshingly unguarded about Joseph Tholl's second solo album. The Swedish multi-instrumentalist, who is best known internationally as a founding member of speed metal outfit Enforcer and currently pulling guitar duties for Tribulation, has spent the years since his 2019 debut Devil's Drum accumulating life experience at a pace that would exhaust most people. New band commitments, prolific side project work, and fatherhood. All of that living seems to have seeped directly into this record, and what emerges is his most emotionally ambitious and openly personal statement yet. Six years is a long gap between solo albums, but the circumstances make it hard to argue with. Joining Tribulation in 2020 brought with it album sessions, an EP, and extensive touring. Parallel work with Tyrann produced two more records. Somewhere in the middle of all that, he became a father. It Might Be Art isn't the product of an artist who lost his way between records, and it's the product of someone who simply had too much else going on, and who waited until the material was genuinely ready rather than forcing it.
Six years is a long gap between solo albums, but the circumstances make it hard to argue with. Joining Tribulation in 2020 brought with it album sessions, an EP, and extensive touring. Parallel work with Tyrann produced two more records. Somewhere in the middle of all that, he became a father. It Might Be Art isn't the product of an artist who lost his way between records; it's the product of someone who simply had too much else going on, and who waited until the material was genuinely ready rather than forcing it. That patience shows.
The album opens with "New Dawn," which announces its intentions immediately, and this is a record built around melody, space, and emotional directness. Big choruses appear throughout without apology, and Tholl's instinct for a hook that lands with genuine weight rather than cheap familiarity is one of the record's defining qualities. "Invocation of the Evening Star" is another early highlight, demonstrating his ability to build atmosphere without sacrificing momentum, while the title track itself takes a notably different approach by placing keyboards at the front of the arrangement rather than tucking them beneath the guitars. That keyboard presence is worth discussing because it runs through the album interestingly. For the most part, synthesizers function as an atmosphere that felt more than heard, adding depth and color to what is fundamentally a guitar-driven record. But on certain tracks, particularly the title song, they step forward and become the main event. It's a deliberate choice, and it works precisely because it isn't applied uniformly. The restraint in most places makes the moments of keyboard prominence feel genuinely significant rather than incidental.
The emotional range of the record is broader than the melodic polish might initially suggest. Tholl has described the album as simultaneously darker and brighter than its predecessor, and that paradox turns out to be accurate. Tracks like "I'm in a Darkness" carry a melancholy that feels lived-in rather than performed, while the sequencing of the album, moving through themes of darkness, death, birth, love, hope, and despair, gives the whole thing a sense of movement and resolution that rewards listening from start to finish. "The Burial" closes proceedings on a suitably heavy note, and its long gestation lends it the feeling of something that needed to be said. Influences surface throughout without dominating. Post-punk atmospherics, strands of grunge, classic heavy rock, and a distinctly Scandinavian melodic sensibility are all detectable, alongside traces of the gothic rock tradition. But Tholl absorbs these rather than reproducing them, and the result sounds like its own thing, melodic rock that has clearly listened to a wide range of music without feeling beholden to any single strand of it.
Most of the writing happened in a concentrated burst in early 2025, though certain ideas had been waiting considerably longer, with the closing track "The Burial" reportedly written in the immediate aftermath of Devil's Drum's release, making it one of the oldest ideas on the album and, fittingly, one of its darkest. The sense that these songs have been properly lived with, rather than rushed toward a release date, gives the album a cohesion that pure efficiency rarely produces. Tholl handles the vast majority of the instrumentation himself, including guitar, bass, piano, synthesizers, and vocals, along with drumming shared between Robert Eriksson of The Hellacopters and Jakob Ljungberg of Second Sun. A thoughtfully assembled group of guests adds texture throughout, including Johannes Andersson and Adam Zaars from Tribulation, Tobias Lindkvist from Tyrann, Pia Stjärnvind of Serpent Omega, and Robert Pehrsson, who co-owns Humbucker Studio with Tholl and handled engineering during the drum sessions before mixing and mastering the finished record. It's a tight, well-chosen circle, and the contributions feel integrated rather than decorative.
The album opens with "New Dawn," which announces its intentions immediately, and this is a record built around melody, space, and emotional directness. Big choruses appear throughout without apology, and Tholl's instinct for a hook that lands with genuine weight rather than cheap familiarity is one of the record's defining qualities. "Invocation of the Evening Star" is another early highlight, demonstrating his ability to build atmosphere without sacrificing momentum, while the title track itself takes a notably different approach by placing keyboards at the front of the arrangement rather than tucking them beneath the guitars. That keyboard presence is worth discussing because it runs through the album interestingly. For the most part, synthesizers function as an atmosphere that felt more than heard, adding depth and color to what is fundamentally a guitar-driven record. But on certain tracks, particularly the title song, they step forward and become the main event. It's a deliberate choice, and it works precisely because it isn't applied uniformly. The restraint in most places makes the moments of keyboard prominence feel genuinely significant rather than incidental.
The emotional range of the record is broader than the melodic polish might initially suggest. Tholl has described the album as simultaneously darker and brighter than its predecessor, and that paradox turns out to be accurate. Tracks like "I'm in a Darkness" carry a melancholy that feels lived-in rather than performed, while the sequencing of the album, moving through themes of darkness, death, birth, love, hope, and despair, gives the whole thing a sense of movement and resolution that rewards listening from start to finish. "The Burial" closes proceedings on a suitably heavy note, and its long gestation lends it the feeling of something that needed to be said. Influences surface throughout without dominating. Post-punk atmospherics, strands of grunge, classic heavy rock, and a distinctly Scandinavian melodic sensibility are all detectable, alongside traces of the gothic rock tradition. But Tholl absorbs these rather than reproducing them, and the result sounds like its own thing, melodic rock that has clearly listened to a wide range of music without feeling beholden to any single strand of it.
The album title itself comes from a genuinely charming anecdote involving a bowl of apples at a friend's house and the entirely reasonable uncertainty about whether they were food or sculpture. It's a funny story, but it also captures something true about what Tholl is doing here, making work that resists easy categorization, that sits in the space between the expected and the indefinable, and that asks listeners to meet it on its own terms. The artwork, which combines a secondhand painting with a commissioned portrait, extends that sensibility visually. It Might Be Art is not a heavy metal record, and Tholl isn't pretending otherwise. What it is, though, is a confident, carefully constructed melodic rock album from someone who had things to say and took the time to figure out exactly how to say them.
The wait between records turns out to have been entirely worth it, so go give the title track a spin now:
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