Negura Bunget
Om

I don't know why no one here has bothered to give the public a small, or even very brief, review of this 2006 gem released under the sparkling wings of perhaps the most courageous Italian label we have: code 666. It seems so strange to me that I, now, a couple of years, almost 3 let's say, after the release of this CD, am finally about to write such a review to fill this unjustifiable void, precisely because of the musical greatness inherent in this latest work from Negura Bunget.

Before starting, a small introduction of the group seems obligatory to me, as they are still a niche band and unknown to most: Negura Bunget are Romanian, coming from the cold desolate lands of Transylvania, where endless forests, wolves, blood-red skies, and vampires have given rise to legends imprinted in our minds since childhood (see under Dracula and the like); what I am about to review is the fourth album, the final step of an evolution that started many years ago, culminating in the last wonderful "'ncrugu bradului", where our band began experimenting with original and truly captivating formulas, which in this latest work become even more penetrating and solid, not to mention truly moving.

Going into more detail, and examining the CD reviewed here, our musicians succeed in a rather arduous yet splendidly original endeavor: combining the emotion of 1970s psychedelia with a rather intricate black metal, original, full of nuances, warm rather than cold (as most Scandinavian groups have taught us), darker than ever, completely free from the satanic image that such a genre carries, but instead completely irradiated by vast natural visions of forests and animals, fierce and maddened by the degree of ignorance towards them from all of us humans, and by soft and vast ambient blasts that perfectly intersect with the whole.
"Om" draws strength from this ambivalence to create unique atmospheres, psychedelic, furious, grandiose, almost epic that hark back to the avant-garde Scandinavian school of In the Woods, Arcturus, Solefald, and company, but also, in some moments, to the new American depressive school, namely Leviathan and Xasthur
initially; and so, after the chilling intro, one embarks on a mystical journey, penetrating, almost out of this world, with guitars that literally take flight on breathtaking harmonic turns, and keyboards that forcefully enter your mind, denoting the psychedelic nature of this work.

"Om" is a unique, splendid, and original journey, at times brilliant; the entire album is equally noteworthy, but four tracks out of 11 are truly worth highlighting as they further elevate the value of this release: 2- tesarul de lumini, with its epic and unrestrained fury; 4- cunoasterea tacuta, with its full and chilling psychedelia, and with unparalleled and emotionally collapsing harmonic openings; 9- cel din urma vis, with its surges of blind fury and descents into unexpected ambient landscapes resolved in genial and extremely exhilarating phrasings and harmonic passages; and finally 10- hora soarelui, where a deep acoustic ballad is staged, shaken by sudden explosions of black rage, and a fitting conclusion to this small jewel.

Negura Bunget have managed to gift us a masterpiece light years away from everything that surrounds them and that knows how to move and keep us engaged throughout its long duration (about 67 minutes), difficult to comprehend but, once understood and internalized, it provides the right coordinates for a new way of understanding the extreme.
Magnificent!