Band:	Negură Bunget
Album:	'N Crugu Bradului
Style:	Black metal, Folk metal
Release date:	2002

01. I
02. II
03. III
04. IV

Transyilvanian Hunger. How could you not think of the famous Darkthrone album when you hear of a Black Metal band coming form Transylvania?

But I don't think that Negura Bunget would like this link, because these Romanian blacksters really come from Transylvania and they are concerned to put this place of origin into their music -with the great atmospheres of their grim and well-known forests beautifully created, and expressed, in the raw BM attacks with cold oppressive riffs and screaming voice, as well as in the acoustic typical folk interludes and in some obscure and morbid guitar harmonies- and into their image. This is all easily recognizable if you look at the artwork and if you think that the CD is published in a limited hand-made (by Negura Bunget themselves? Who knows?) carton box in which you can find a leaf (!) from the tree under which Huprogrammos Disciple's, Sol Faur Spurcatu and Negru conceived the album.

As you could have already noticed, the songs are only four, but this album is not a MCD and, on the contrary, it has a total running time of 53:40. It means that the four songs have the medium length of 12-13 minutes. And, in my opinion, this is the biggest weakness of this album.

The songs are really varied and dynamic: now powerful, now reflective, now angry, proof of an inspired and meditated songwriting, but it is almost impossible to memorize a song if you listen it (accurately) less than 5-6 times, since it is hard to find a fix refrain or a repeated part.

I don't mean that this is bad, since I think that real art should go beyond schemes, but in this way it is maybe too dispersive: one long track is good, but an album composed only by four 12 minutes tracks, hard to memorize and without a name if not a roman number, is a bit too "impersonal". If you add that the lyrics are entirely in Romanian (what I know is only that they are concerned with spiritualistic-natural-pantheistic themes since Negura Bunget are really interested in expressing their mystical ideologies through the lyrics), you'll get the point.

Apart from this "problem", I think that this is a really interesting album - intelligent, played with passion and accuracy, a rare thing in the BM panorama. It seems to me that Negura Bunget have a lot of good ideas, a good technical preparation and a real and sincere attitude in playing Black Metal, like we cannot easily find in other bands nowadays.

What is sure is that you can forget to play the CD and start head-banging, or to listen to it absentmindedly, since it needs an accurate and concentrated listening to grasp the continuous time and rhythm variation of the long songs. If you'll enjoy this album in this way, you'll be able to find something new on every listening.
I've figured out that the best listening would be in a long car drive, driving along a road in the mountains or woods.

A good confirm from a band that distinguishes itself from the usual BM acts and that could have a shining future.