Band:	Ofnus
Album:	Time Held Me Grey And Dying
Style:	Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	June 2023

01. Burned By The Soul Of The Moon
02. The Endless Grey
03. Fading Dreams
04. Grains Of Sand
05. Echoes
06. Exulansis
07. Monody
08. A Thousand Lifetimes

Welsh atmospheric black metal band Ofnus will celebrate the release of their debut album, Time Held Me Grey And Dying, with a performance at Bloodstock Festival. If you’re wondering how a year-old band with no albums (and, at the time of booking, no gigs) under their belt got booked to play a major metal festival, the answer is yes, its members have been in other bands before, and that experience shines through on this record.

With backgrounds in the likes of Agrona, Blind Divide, Democratus and Black Pyre, the denizens of Ofnus are no novices when it comes to music; in fact, three of their other groups have already played Bloodstock. That experience also likely helped them obtain a slot on the Naturmacht Productions roster for the release of this debut outing, an album that has an aura of professionalism to its songwriting and its production.

As someone who trawls through over a hundred new releases each week and pretty much gives them 1 minute to intrigue me enough to listen further, giving your album a strong opening is about the most important thing you can do to get people listening to the full record, in my opinion. I’ve previously trumpeted the importance of a strong opening track, particularly on a debut record, when reviewing Urne’s Serpent & Spirit, and Ofnus have evidently also recognized the value of this by kicking off Time Held Me Grey And Dying with the excellent “Burned By The Soul Of The Moon”, a 10-minute slow burn that demonstrates how Ofnus draw from frozen meloblack and more expansive atmo-black. As the song progresses, it shifts from grim and frostbitten territory to something more folksy and soul-stirring, deep choral chants joining the prevalent shrieked vocal style and the beautiful melodic lead guitar work taking on an increasingly pivotal role in the equation.

Ultimately, those more earthly tones, evocative of lush panoramic vistas, are more representative of the tone of this album than those early minutes; a song such as “The Endless Grey”, with its mellow textures and effective folk melodic refrain, bears a greater resemblance to Fen or Saor than Dissection. It’s not really a folk black metal album, although the prominence of the baritone chants on “Exulansis” does take that song, along with a couple of others, more in that direction. Genuine darkness is sparsely found here, yet some quite ominous riffs do pop up scattered across the record, such as towards the end of “Echoes”. In contrast, some of the tremolo-heavy sections almost feel closer to post-black or blackgaze.

Atmo-black, admittedly like probably a dozen other genres in metal by this point, has dealt with accusations of becoming stale due to oversaturation in the past decade or so; Ofnus don’t reinvent the wheel here, and this album isn’t reflective of the genre’s full potential in the way that, say, Ethereal Shroud’s Trisagion recently was, but it’s far more compelling than many debuts in the genre are prone to be. Outside of the opening song, probably the two standout cuts here are “Grains Of Sand” and “A Thousand Lifetimes”. The latter, which closes the record, has a hint of Agalloch to it, particularly due to the way the lead guitar is integrated into the mix, but it also features some of the most spiritually resonant sequences on the record, particularly in its second half, which gradually intensifies after the track temporarily pauses midway through. “Grains Of Sand” is centered around a single motif, but it’s a motif that’s strong and versatile enough to remain compelling across the song’s 6 minutes.

With this album coming out a week before Fen’s latest release, it’s been a decent summer thus far for British atmo-black (perhaps fitting, as we have a mild summer while the rest of Europe roasts). If you’re sweltering in 40°C heat and want to vicariously experience cooler climes, maybe give Ofnus a listen while summer holds you red and burning.