Offernat - The Ecstasy of Death

Offernat – The Ecstasy of Death
Release Date: 11th September 2026
Label: Night of Sacrifice Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Progressive Blackened Death Doom Metal
FFO: Neurosis, ORM, Tarask, Konvent, Dvne, Echo of Theia, early Mastodon, Hell Gate, Kratt, Mind Prisoner.
Review By: Mark Young

The signs are there straight from the beginning that Offernat aren’t here to do things like everybody else. The intro harmonic arrangement to Tears is positively Queen like in its execution and the subsequent breakdown is a throw-back to the visceral death metal where the focus was kept on laying down suppressive wave after wave of metal. The song lengths may give you pause, but come for the brutality and stay for the intelligent forward thinking metal that appreciates that brutality and technical ability should go hand in hand. Throw in a perfect understanding of where their progressive tendencies should sit and you have a stormer of an opening track. It’s really that simple. You could forensically take the song apart, section by section and state why it works, but that would be dull. Very dull. Instead just jump on/in and let this wash over you. It is possible that it lingers a little too long, but that is a minor note, one to be wary of when thinking about the progressive aspects of their sound. It’s likely that some bands after deploying a 12 minute kick off would retreat a little, bringing something a little more immediate to the party, but not these. This is their arena and you have been invited to it. Don’t like it, press skip and move on. The Signal’s Origin has a dread running through its opening moments, before they hit the switch and bring the guitars into play. Where Tears had speed behind it, here they play up to the Doom ticket and show that playing slow, measured music holds no fear for them either. In either case they are able to imbue something to whatever approach they are taking. This isn’t a long song just for the sake of it, it has meaning, a gravity to it. I mean it is a given that they can’t stay slow forever so when that switch does occur it is expected but does then give them opportunity to change tack to suit where they want to go with this. Those sumptuous harmonies come in again, and I’ll be honest I am a sucker for them. Over the course of two songs they have shown themselves to be alive with more ideas than most, so when you look at this as being 4 tracks long, you are getting as much metal goodness as you would with a 10 track effort elsewhere.

It sounds great, every measure, chord, beat is exactly what they want it to be; The bends that dominate Metamorphosis’s start, its slow crawl that seems to add more to it as it moves continually forward as it changes shape and velocity is quality. Yes, we know that the transition isn’t a new thing but so what? When it’s handled like it is here, I could care less. It all fits, that’s the point. The Ecstasy of Death closes the album out and I’ll go out on a limb right now and state that this is one of THE best songs of 2026. It collects everything they have done in the last 35 or so minutes into one space and then fires it back at you in a way that sounds completely fresh when held up against the other songs here. It has everything – doom, eastern tinged death metal, pinched harmonics, drum rolls, harmonies, the lot. If you asked me what progressive death metal sounded like I’d say this, but I’d caveat it by saying it’s not all as good as this. I realise that this review is more like a gushing of praise at this point but from my perspective it delivers on every level; it satisfies my core requirements for heavy metal whilst being original and I just want to tell others about it. Spread the word.