Otala’s lastest song Tenov is groundbreaking in its discussion about grief, the depseration one feels when someone they were devoted to dies. This loss of self in the loss of someone else and the onset of crisis this can become.
We are all haunted by the looming headstone of an empty grave,we have see friends and family fall, their demise a reminder that we shall one day join them. What do we let fade when we focus on what is gone? Those that sleep will surley stir again, eyes stark in the daylight, but what about those that stay shut?
Tennov is written in a 4/4 time signature to reflect the ongoing cycle of love,loss and grief. The beuaty of love is that it can be lost and it is perhaps with this knowledge that we should look after it, cherish it try to make it last. Just because someone has been buried, or burned or lost does not mean the love you had for them has to die too. Losing someone is a lonely place, you isolate yourself in an effort to immortalize them in your memory.
As a punk quintent Otala really capture the anger and exhasution of grief in Tennov which explores themes of anger, denial, helplessness. Its narrrative offers a foreboding hand down a darkened path, the mind of death and darkness. This forest of forelonging crowds our vision and we are buried in the woods, pining for all that is gone.
Grief is a mutual experience, a loved one shielded in wood once stood tall now lies still. We are left to die without them by our side. Dorothy Tennov wrote about the expereince of being in Love, researching individual cases, we may all expereince different verions of love but we will all suffer the same loss. We are in debt to those we have lost, the love we shared, the lessons learned from each other. We pay not in our suffering, each tear cried is not a currency, but with our desicion to rejoice, celebrate life as if they were still living it so they can vicariously laugh and cry with you.
The lyrics that stick out to me in Tennov are:
“Sometimes I wonder what would be and what will be if you took my hand. Red and swollen it rests in my palm. An careless act of selfishness but it could never be a lie”.
Otala are really making their mark in the music industry, with up coming gigs on the 3rd of February in The George Tavern London, The Bodega in Nottignham on the 24th of March and april the 9th in the New Adelphi Club in Hull. Click here to buy tickets!
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