A quite unusual album occupies my CD player presently. Already excited by effusive advance notices and also because of the information I got from the official band page (which is really great), I could hardly wait to get the brand new and third album of NEGURA BUNGET into my fingers. I have to concede, code666 really has the right touch for unusual music. By the way … this CD gets delivered with a hand made deluxe card box.
Well, their info sheet already brims over with excessive descriptions and comparisons. But eventually it is just a replay of the history, information and ideology the band presents on their website. There is the speech of a journey into the world and spirituality of Transylvanian ancestors, of Romanian myths, of universal transcendence, blood and immortality, of legends and honor and the principle of four. In a musical respect the band gets easily labeled as Primitive Transylvanian Metal. But nothing here is primitive at all!
’N crugu bradului is basically a pure and harsh Black Metal album. And it is an concept album based on the natural foundation of the universe, the principle of the four. ’N crugu bradului is reflecting this principle (unfortunately I don’t know the meaning of the album title) which consists of the 4 seasons, 4 cardinal points, 4 elements, the 4 phases of the moon … etc. Unfortunately there are no lyrics to this promo and on the official band page the lyrics are exclusively in Romanian. So I can hardly comprehend the concept in its entirety. I don’t know which of these aspects of the four flow in and which not. Which cardinal point is belonging to which season and which element? Or do they all exist independently of each other and there is just a transcendent connection? I’m not familiar with this kind of approach, religion or ideology. So readers of this review may teach me ;)
Consequently the album is built up in four phases, seasons or chapters (each of it with 12 to 15 minutes). Every chapter is one continuous song with lots of different elements.
Chapter I starts out dark with jingly and clanking tunes, spreading icy coldness and rawness with schizophrenic background singing. Psychotic guitar tunes set in to merge into a truly Black Metal thunderstorm. This music is well-fitting to the clanking cold of the winter. In spite of discreetly utilized high speed passages the main pace is midtempo and the band attaches importance to melodic tensions. Some riffs and song structures get repeated not to loose the red thread. The keyboards set skillfully counterpoints while staying in the background but spread a hypnotic and intense atmosphere. Concerning the guitars you may associate them subliminally with Avantgarde bands like Arcturus. The singing ranges in typical Black Metal fields. The whole chapter creates such a coldness …
Chapter II starts out extremely slow and lugging, almost doomy, just to try to awake. But always again the rhythm falls back into this slow and doomy sound, just to ascend from lethargy, to go over in gentle springlike and energetic acoustic parts. The singing changes to spoken words and then to clean vocals. Admittedly these ones need getting used to. It sounds dramatically, agonizing and martyred, even fading to abysmal screams which remind me of the screams on Elend albums. It fits perfectly to the concept but you need to get used to it. The pure Black Metal core hasn’t changed that much though. Just the acoustic parts are flowing in always again.
Chapter III and IV underlie the same structure but now it is really hard to comprehend the musically conceptual sophistications. There are also not these significant elements anymore like the acoustic parts or clean singing. The chapters are mainly stamped by pure Black Metal with some sound samples and some changes. But chapter IV offers pretty spacy sound samples and an extensive intro and outro.

All things considered NEGURA BUNGET offers with ’N crugu bradului an awesome album and Black Metal in a special way. Icy cold, mystical, schizophrenic, melancholic, hypnotic, even possessed. The spirituality of Transylvanian is almost manifest. The concept is complex and hard to realize. But NEGURA BUNGET have done a good job. And with every new spin you will hear new niceties and changes albeit you can’t comprehend them. An unusual but amazing masterpiece!