Ofnus – Valediction | soundsfromthedarkside

Welsh black metallers Ofnus have released their second album all the way back in February, so it’s about time we gave it a well-deserved listen.

Each year, I create a playlist on my Streaming Platform of Choice™, on which I gather every single album that gets released that year. A lot of those albums are ones that I know that I will end up buying physically, but amongst them are also albums by bands that people recommend to me, albums that seem interesting or records that receive positive reviews that I want to check out. For your information: the list for this year counts 676 tracks and is almost 57 hours long. The first thing I do when I get to the office is put on the playlist, set it to shuffle and let it play randomly and continuously throughout the work day. There will be a lot of stuff I already know, but occasionally there will be a song that make me prick up my ears and wonder what it is. This, dear reader, leads us to Ofnus.

Every time a song from Valediction, Ofnus’ sophomore record came along, I had to check what it was. I’d read a review somewhere, got my eye drawn to the gorgeous artwork and added it to the list without ever thinking about the band again. Until my playlist decided to pummel me over the head with this record, and the song Proteus in particular. It’s an eleven-minute behemoth of a song, starting out as a fairly typical black metal song with thundering drums and a huge layer of digital orchestration, but about halfway through its runtime it turns into something else; a riveting, massive, sweeping track that is more reminiscent of an orchestral suite than a black metal song. It reminds me of a movie soundtrack that I know but can’t put my finger on what it is, exactly.

Proteus is a bit of a blueprint for how this band from Cardiff, Wales operates. The songs are oftentimes long and intricate, containing a number of changes in both tempo and direction. Clocking in at over 57 minutes, only two of the seven songs are shorter than six minutes. Whilst it’s good to have a couple of shorter, more immediate tracks on the album, the highlights lie undoubtedly in the more lengthy tracks. The base palette is, of course, black metal, but many of the songs contain hints of folk and progressive rock and metal. The band walks a fine line between kitsch and art, but does it well. The string section in Zero Dolour, for example, reeks of pretentiousness, but is handled deftly enough to be taken seriously, just as the very progressive rock sounding guitar solo in the title track, which is being backed by furious blast beats. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

Valediction is one of those rare albums that starts out being good and ends up getting better and better with each listen. There is a lot going on here and it’s a lot to take in on the first one or two times. Give it time, however, and the beauty will unfold. Ofnus has written a deeply melancholy record here and one of the better melodic black metal albums of the year that I can heartily recommend to fans of the genre.

Label: Naturmacht Productions

Buy it here: https://ofnus.bandcamp.com/

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