I feel it’s auspicious that my first album review of the new year gives me yet another chance to rave about how much I love split releases. The camaraderie, the creativity, the dichotomy; the split is a nigh-perfect format for bands to do so much with, to lift each other up and highlight the best parts of each contributing act. Lotus Thief and Forlesen join such lofty ranks and prove that even when the people you’re collaborating with are mostly yourself the split still manages to capture the facets of each work that gives them a unique shine.

Based out of the Bay Area of California, both Lotus Thief and Forlesen share core members with each other and each band takes an epic approach to songwriting in differing directions. Lotus Thief craft narratives that preserve and juxtapose ancient literature with modern philosophical questions, such as the Greek tragedy that fueled the band’s 2020 album Oresteia. On this split, Lotus thief find themselves in their most epic form yet, with their track “In Perdition,” which borrows from Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decamaron, a series of 100 short stories nestled within a larger tale involving a group of young people sheltering in place outside of Florence to avoid the Black Death. It should come as no surprise that this song was written and refined during our own pandemic years and its tale of vengeance from God on high and a people pushed to their limit from corruption mirrors the song’s crescendo moving from soft, sparse vocals and guitar to a roaring climax like a rock opera condensed into twelve minutes of music. Forlesen, in contrast, have chosen to preserve and reimagine history in a different way by reinterpreting a Celtic-Appalachian folk staple in “Black is the Color.” Existing in the region for perhaps over a hundred years (and there is evidence to suggest the song’s roots in Scotland before traveling to America by way of colonizers), “Black is the Color” is a woeful song about love denied, whether by distance or death, and Forlesen have chosen to give the tune a suitably dour veneer, using down-tuned guitars and droning vocals to highlight the sadness and longing that permeates the lyrics, before building up to an explosion of emotions as vocalists Bezaelith and Ascalaphus look for the day “when she and I will be as one.” 

Everything about this split release highlights what I love about splits to begin with. It’s fun to see bands take the same prompt and run in their own directions with it, whether it’s the tensions surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic in the US or historical pieces that get a modern sheen applied to them. It’s fun to compare and contrast two different bands’ approaches to epic songwriting, to play with rising and falling tensions or stay mostly monotonous and droning before exploding outwards. It’s fun in this particular setting to see two bands with the same core songwriting membership execute their music so differently from one another, yet in a way that is all complimentary. Split releases are so much fun, and Lotus Thief and Forlesen have given the perfect primer as to why.

— Vincent

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This split will be available January 26th on I, Voidhanger Records. For more information on Lotus Thief, visit their official website and for more information on Forlesen, visit their Facebook page.