ZÎRNINDU-Să

Zîrnindu-Sã is the debut studio album from Romanian extreme metal act Negura Bunget. Negura Bunget is a new band to me but they have been around since the mid-nineties and this debut album was released in 1996.

The music can be described as atmospheric black metal. Nothing out of the ordinary IMO. Raspy extreme black metal vocals and both fast and mid-paced black metal riffing. The music is actually pretty melodic with lots of symphonic keyboards which spice up the primitive black metal. When it´s most melodic I´m reminded of the very influential Swedish death metal band Unanimated. The lyrics are in Romanian but it doesn´t really matter much as the raspy vocals are pretty hard to understand. The vocals are pretty good IMO. Aggressive and sharp. The songwriting isn´t the best and the songs sound a bit too similar.

The musicianship is allright but it´s not excellent. The band only consists of two members at this time. Hupogrammos Disciple's ( I just love those black metal names) who plays Guitars, Vocals, Bass and Keyboards and Negru who handles drums.

The production leaves a lot to be desired and even thought it doesn´t ruin my listening experience it doesn´t enhance it either.

It´s not because of this album that Negura Bunget is on Prog Archives that´s for sure. This is actually not a bad album but it is pretty basic, melodic and symphonic black metal. Nothing of interest for progheads here IMO. 2 stars is deserved.