Ars Onirica – 2.5 Nighttime
Label: Ardua Music
Release Date: October 24, 2025
Alessandro Sforza belongs to the fold of artists who sculpt entire worlds from silence. Through his solo project Ars Onirica, he has built a universe steeped in melancholy and transcendence — a space where melodic doom and death metal dissolve into dreamlike storytelling. His upcoming EP, 2.5 Nighttime, arrives as an interlude between albums, but what it offers feels nothing like an afterthought. Instead, it’s a lucid, cinematic passage through shadow and starlight.
Originally conceived as a full band in the early 2000s and reborn as Sforza’s solo vision in 2018, Ars Onirica has steadily evolved across the albums I: Cold and II: Lost — both praised for their emotional weight and atmospheric depth. With 2.5 Nighttime, recorded and mastered alongside Lorenzo Carlini (Black Therapy, Invernoir) at Blue Ocean Recording Studio, Sforza continues to refine that aesthetic: patient, textured, and profoundly human.
The EP opens with “Dusk (An Ode to the Stars)”, a brief and breathtaking prelude that glows like a memory. Acoustic guitars shimmer with quiet grace, while soft vocals drift across the mix.. it honestly reminded me of Under the Milky Way by The Church — not in imitation, but in spirit. It’s the calm before descent.
“Nighttime Part I” unfurls in waves of harmonic guitars that border on shoegaze, though grounded firmly in melodic doom’s emotional gravity. The vocals blur beautifully into the instrumentation, each phrase melting into the next like vapor. When the song fades, it feels less like an ending and more like a vanishing — a slow drift into the subconscious.
That reverie is violently interrupted by “Nighttime Part II (Your Silence Around Me)”, where Sforza’s clean, elegiac tones give way to death metal growls over deliberate, crushing riffs. The transitions are jarring by design — light and dark caught in a single breath. He navigates the line between beauty and brutality with an almost cinematic control, channeling sorrow, rage, and reflection in equal measure. The emotional tension is palpable, pulling the listener deeper into his world rather than away from it.
Then comes “Nighttime Part III,” the EP’s storm. A burst of blackened ferocity tears through the calm — rapid-fire drums, shrieking highs, and deep growls coexisting like two sides of an internal war. Yet just as quickly, the chaos recedes into melody. This dance between torment and transcendence feels deliberate, almost ritualistic, as though Sforza is exorcising something too personal to name. His guitar work shines here: expressive, controlled, and never indulgent.
Finally, “Dawn” closes the circle. The darkness softens; melody and light return. It begins like a slow breath after grief — instrumental, open, and airy. As the drums swell and the lead guitars rise into harmony, the EP ends on a tone of release. There’s a sense of peace, but not erasure — only the quiet acknowledgment of what’s been survived.
For fans of Anathema, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, and Sforza’s other project Invernoir, 2.5 Nighttime is an essential listen — a reminder that doom metal, at its best, is less about heaviness and more about truth. Sforza’s strength lies not just in composition, but in vulnerability. Each track is layered with meaning, as though dream and grief are woven from the same thread.
Though technically a bridge between records, 2.5 Nighttime stands fully on its own — a self-contained nocturne of despair, beauty, and rebirth. It is the sound of an artist caught between worlds, translating darkness into something almost divine. Take a listen to the most intense track on the EP below to get a sense of the jarring fusion of blackened death metal and doom:
2.5 Nighttime EP can be preordered at Bandcamp and Ardua Music
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