ALBUM REVIEW: Where Nothing Grows – Offernat

Human emotions are, as we all know, complex at best. The way we react to major life events – love, loss, grief – completely differs from one person to the next. Some people seem able to brush things off, emerging positive and seemingly unscathed, while others are unable to escape the after-effects, immersing themselves fully in their own experience until they are able to drag themselves out of the other side. This is very much the theme of Where Nothing Grows, the second album from Danish blackened doom outfit OFFERNAT. Following on from 2022’s All Colours Retract, which focused thematically on the destruction of the natural world, this time the band are exploring the world through a more personal, human perspective.  

Although a trio on their debut, OFFERNAT now consists of just two members: Anders Bork (vocals, guitars, bass) and Jonas Bangstrup (vocals, drums, bass). This makes the recording and production job on this album all the more impressive, as the band and mixer Simon Sonne Andersen have done an excellent job with the sound across each of the five epic songs. It is a huge-sounding record but not one that feels overproduced or messed with, although it is easy to wonder how these songs will translate to a live setting without losing that sense of vastness. 

Opening track Grief starts with an epic doom-fuelled introduction, reminiscent of PALLBEARER in places, before it launches into galloping, blackened verses complete with blastbeats and harshly screamed vocals. Here the duo creates a surging, pounding heaviness, pushed along by impressively technical drumming and some great jagged post-rock inspired riffs (more of this later). However, clocking in at 15 minutes you do wonder after a while if it’s all just a bit too long for the sake of it. The more experimental, progressive passages at the ten-minute mark if anything lose their way, lessening the impact of the powerful opening sections.

The title track is up next and follows a similar path, although this time opening with some furious black metal before descending into some grimace-inducing death-doom verses. It’s in these latter sections where OFFERNAT’s music really shines, slow crunching riffs and driving drums giving a real sense of impact, before veering off again into black metal sections that feel like you’ve heard them before. At over 16 minutes long, you can’t help but feel it’s getting more indulgent than immersive, despite the excellent classic doom coda that takes up the final four minutes.

The record is at its most engaging when the band switch to a more ambient, post-rock approach to their songs on the largely instrumental third track Like Blood In The Snow. Again there are touches of PALLBEARER at their most melodic here and, ironically, the band seem able to fit more light and shade into this piece despite it being half the length of the other songs. Final track Funeral Fantasy retains these haunting qualities but these are again undermined by the consistently harsh vocal deliveries and at this point you wonder whether the aforementioned musical light and shade should have been applied more liberally to the vocal performances too, especially on another 16-minute epic.

Musically OFFERNAT are a very talented outfit and showcase a powerful, and sometimes innovative, exploration of heavy music on Where Nothing Grows. However, the longer songs sometimes struggle to retain the power and passion of their opening sections and you can’t help but think a less meandering approach to songwriting might actually help the band to create something a little more original and emotionally immersive.

Rating: 6/10

Where Nothing Grows is set for release on March 29th via Indisciplinarian.

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