NEGURĂ BUNGET — Poartă de Dincolo (review)

NEGURĂ BUNGET — Poartă de Dincolo album cover EP · 2011 · Atmospheric Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
adg211288
Poartă de Dincolo is a 2011 EP by Romanian metal band Negură Bunget. Containing four tracks of music the EP lasts for a little under half an hour, with track times being pretty long apiece. Although I personally am not that familiar with their prior work bar a few tracks from their 2006 album OM I have gathered that Negură Bunget is quite a respected name among the metal crowds, which led me to believe that I was in for a treat when a promo for Poartă de Dincolo turned up in my email.

Sadly I feel that despite the renown I have seen all over the Internet for the band, it’s very clear to me that Poartă de Dincolo isn’t the work of a band at the top of their game. It isn’t a bad release as such, it’s quite enjoyable in fact to a point, but a lot of the time I find that the tracks are drawn out too long. The band’s mix of black, progressive and folk metal works well for them and the inclusion of an ambient track (Frig in Oase) is a nice surprise for a release of this nature, and compositionally there are a lot of nice atmospheric ideas going on despite the need for some trimming down. What mars the release the most is that the vocalist showcases some very poor quality growls which coupled with the clear quality from other aspects of the release comes as something of a kick in the teeth. The clean vocals, which are pretty haunting actually work very well and often give a nice folk feel to them which I especially like about the EP. If Negură Bunget were to stick to just clean vocals they’d have a much more praise-worthy release on their hands here.

All in all though there is more to be praised in Poartă de Dincolo than there is to complain about, but upon the EP’s conclusion I am left with the feeling than overall a certain spark is missing. As an atmospheric metal release it works, just not to the point that it could be considered a masterpiece or anything close to it. As I stated above I find the growls the real down point of the EP, and when they hit it kills the whole atmosphere for me. If you can get over the growls then I suspect that fans of atmospheric metal will like this release, but if you are like me and those growls just ruin it for you then I can’t really say there is much going for this EP. Music wise an above average score is actually warranted because all in all it really is only those growls that don’t deserve the recognition. The highlight of the EP for me was actually the ambient track Frig in Oase, mostly because there are no growls to ruin it.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)
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