The heavy music scene lost a major player when SubRosa announced their breakup in 2019 but The Otolith fills that hole in our collective heart while taking their signature doom sound somewhere new. Featuring former SubRosa members Sarah Pendleton (lead vocals, violin), Kim Cordray (violin, vocals), Andy Patterson (drums) and Levi Hanna (guitar, vocals) alongside bassist Matt Brotherton (Visigoth), The Otolith’s debut album Folium Limina is broad in scope, crushing in its heaviness and beautiful in its moments of quiet.
Folium Limina contains six songs, leading with the massive opener “Sing No Coda.” The 13-and-a-half minute track makes it very clear that we are picking off in a very similar place to where SubRosa left off on 2016’s excellent For This We Fought the Battle of Ages. The song begins with quiet atmosphere and instrumentation, the guitars and violins building tension that only increases when Pendleton’s vocals come in, building to a dirge of melancholic doom. Third track “Ekpyrotic” underscores Pendleton’s vocal prowess alongside just violin and later with the full band.
There is a strong emphasis on neofolk and darkwave, particularly on tracks like “Hubris,” with the band citing acts like Worm Ouroborus as an influence. Closing track “Dispirit” serves as a fitting bookend to the album, beginning as a depressingly heavy song featuring lines like “There is no light / There is no warmth” before fading out in emotional keys, violins and static.
Brotherton adds the band’s thoughts on the record:
“While it was important to us to distinguish The Otolith as a wholly new offering, one that would be capable of standing on its own merits and yet at the same time holding reverence for the shared past of its core members, it came about naturally in the writing process… juggernaut riffs juxtaposed with plaintive violin passages and haunting vocal melodies burst forth from each track, all forming their own unique identities within the context of the album as a whole.
“We humbly invite you to embark on this journey of peaks and valleys, of ebb and flow, of wax and wane, of despair and, ultimately, hope: hope for the future, hope for understanding and hope for new beginnings.”
It’s hard to truly express the dynamics in a record like The Otolith’s Folium Limina but Decibel has you covered with a full stream. Folium Limina is a record that sinks its hooks into the listener’s brain, demanding repeat listens to take it all in. If you only hear one doom record this year, make it this one. Folium Limina is out officially on October 21 via Blues Funeral.
