Negura Bunget
'N Crugu Bradului

Sol Faur is the place where the perpetual motion of the stars stops to be captured in its dazzling beauty, and once deconstructed into infinitesimal fragments, it is reconstituted in the seductive and acrid structure of hypnotic and dreamy guitar patterns; then there is Negru, the power to break the time through which the sentences of Hpogrammos Disciple's, a visionary resurrector of ancient Romanian sacred texts, creep in.

The Negura Bunget are a trio of superior minds from distant Romania, a place celebrated in every age by foreigners of various kinds more than by local bards; novellas, novels, poetic works, and songs have for over a thousand years of history celebrated in a refined and ominous way this mysterious and gloomy land, Transylvania, producing works as famous and immortal as they are far from the deep spirit of these places; just quote the lyrics of Dead in "Freezin Moon" (without even having to mention Stoker) to notice the difference between the stereotyped and foggy Transylvania of metallic literature and the living and feral one of Negura Bunget.

"The Black Fog that emerges from the deep forest" (Negura Bunget) is that intangible line that divides the true understanding of these lands from the fabulous narratives of foreigners; outside of this invisible curtain lies the grim Transylvania of Dracula, a bloodthirsty vampire, symbol and epitome of the contemporary man's anxieties. Inside, however, unfolds a world rich with multifaceted figures, of clear images that nevertheless hide a wild and feral nature: here a flower is never picked by completely turning your back to the forest.

Fascinating figures of shepherds marked by time wander through forests, grazing the flock waiting for the evening to come home; in spring they linger to contemplate the awakening of nature, in summer they stop in the shade to shelter themselves from the heat under tall firs that point straight to the sky, a place where more than once the thoughts of the mountaineers are directed. Sometimes an interlocutor appears, a young man eager to receive the precious teachings that popular wisdom can impart to survive in that world, while other times it is only nature that captures attention, in a bucolic picture as admirable as it is aware of the horrors that even nature holds for man.

On this "para-bucolic" theme, a second, decidedly more captivating one is grafted, bringing the images from the physical plane to the conceptual one, contradicting them, confuting them, and overturning them to give them new meaning, more intimate and deep. The shepherds almost become sages, figures holding superior knowledge, that linked to the heritage of rites (actions) and myths (narratives), in a game between saying and doing that finds a mirrored beauty in the relationship between music (rite) and voice (myth).

In the fourth track of this concept dedicated to the seasons, a track reserved for winter, one perceives the heaviness of the snow that covers not only the trees but also the interlocutors, the young man, and the shepherd; a symbolic situation that foreshadows a supernatural solution, the only possible one: a wolf in the distance slowly raises its neck, moves, and making a leap returns to its original constellation, crossing the sky. The epiphany resolves everything, transcending the physical and giving it new vitality.

This complexity on a lyrical level finds an adequate yet problematic solution on a musical level; the Negura Bunget are probably the most difficult and inscrutable entity in black metal, because to the complexity of groups like Arcturus and Limbonic Art it does not add clear playful-theatrical escapes that can dissolve the tension of the moment. The group plays a symphonic-rooted black metal, partly indebted to Eastern European groups like Nokturnal Mortum, enriched with Ambient interludes, Folk moments: in 9 cases out of 10 this amalgam would give life to an unpalatable mess.

An extraordinary personality, impeccable production, and impressive technique save the group from mere self-celebration, making this record a masterpiece not only of black metal, not only of metal, but of all music.

On the shields is the drummer/percussionist Negru, by far the best in his role within a scene that certainly leaves no space for technicalities; but it is the group's avant-garde attitude that must be celebrated: among the grooves of the record you can smell the Black Sea, a crossroads of cultures (Romanian, Russian, Turkish) that in turn emerge and merge into a single reality; but also the horror that the sacred arouses, through the swirling riffs, the singer's feral throat, the tribal rhythms of the drums...

Immense...