Style: Black metal, post-black metal, blackgaze (mixed vocals, mostly harsh)
Recommended for fans of: Numenorean, Astronoid, Alcest, Ghost Bath
Country: Romania
Release date: 18 May 2025

Maybe it’s due to my Pacific Northwest upbringing, but I’ve always found comfort in overcast skies and long stretches of dark. And while I don’t think of myself as a sad person, I’m drawn to sad music the way someone might be drawn to black clouds or the night feeling. I find a certain kind of beauty in melancholy that doesn’t ask for resolution—it just exists, quiet and steady, like a hard truth that no one is trying to fix. A song steeped in sorrow can feel oddly comforting, not because I’m looking to wallow, but because there’s something artful about the way sadness is shaped into sound—stretching melodies, choosing words more carefully, and making silence, yes, even silence, more meaningful.

Which is exactly what Genune’s Infinite Presence does. While the album is rooted in black metal and certainly makes a blistering entrance, it quickly reveals its true nature: a collection of tracks dripping with dejection but glowing with cautious optimism. Genune’s primary tool in balancing this duality is their guitar work. The tracks are driven forward with furiously strummed power chord progressions that loudly echo black metal’s punk ancestry, yet they’re imbued with bright, yearning melodies and chord progressions that wouldn’t feel out of place on an Astronoid record.

On top of these chord progressions, Genune layer arpeggiated melodies that cut through the noise like threads of light. Nowhere is this more effective than on “Little Fountains,” where the lead lines tug at the heart with a delicate ache. “I Want You Here” is another standout—its chiming guitar motifs echo like bells from a tower that simultaneously acknowledge a period of mourning as they ring in a new day. While sadness is in the soundscape, the melodies and instrumentation refuse to let the hurt wallow, pulling it forward one trembling note at a time.

Even songs that seem like they are going to break out of this mold eventually come back around. “To Not Grow Old” and “Stay a Little Longer” both begin in familiar dissonant territory wrought with scraping textures and scowling, raspy vocal work, but they soon shift into the same melodic sensitivity that defines Infinite Presence. These transitions are arguably the only seamless ones on the entire album; elsewhere, the shifts into different flavors of melancholy are a bit too abrupt or unnatural, sometimes even between tracks. “Little Fountains” feels like it ends in the middle of a thought not fully articulated, being interrupted by the intro of “Stay a Little Longer.” Some transitions also come completely out of left field, such as the switch into a distinctly synthwave extended outro on that same track.

Calling out an oddity such as that synthwave outro seems strange when zooming out on Infinite Presence since the album generally stirs in distinct influence from other genres to great effect. Streaks of 90s alt-rock and even Americana surface throughout the LP. The title track is an extended interlude that sounds akin to a withered, folksy blues song plucked from the rocking chair of a rural porch, while a lot of the melodic flow and instrumental textures in tracks such as “The Sun Will Always Shine” and “I Want You Here” wouldn’t sound out of place on an R.E.M. or Cranberries album. Yet, Infinite Presence is still a black metal album. Though not without its quiet and pensive, clean-sung, and post- bits, plenty of blast beats, raspy and harsh vocal lines, and scorching guitar work make up its core. The contrast might occasionally dip into Gimmickland—like that piano bit in “The Sun Will Always Shine,” which is simultaneously beautiful and goofy—but the emotional core is so earnest I can’t fault it for those brief detours.

In the same way a grey sky can feel warm, Infinite Presence holds space for both sorrow and solace. Without asking you to pick a side, it wants you to feel hope and despair, fragility and ferocity—and invites you to sit with all of it. While some fumbled transitions and rocky experimentation keep the album out of flawless territory, its emotional clarity and melodic ambition more than make up for its rough edges. Genune may still be working out the finer points of their fusion, but what they’ve created is something I’ll revisit: a black metal album that both aches and dares to feel hopeful.

Recommended tracks: Little Fountains, I Want You Here, The Sun Will Always Shine
You may also like: Zéro Absolu, Ultar, Together to the Stars
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram | Facebook | Metal-Archives

Label: Consouling Sounds – Official Website | Instagram | Facebook

Genune is:
Dragoș Chiricheș – guitars, synths, acoustic guitar
Cosmin Farcău – guitars
István Vladăreanu – bass, voice
Abel Păduret – drums
Victor Neicutescu – voice

The post Review: Genune – Infinite Presence appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive rock, progressive metal, avant-garde rock, avant-garde metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Therion, Devil Doll, Ayreon, David Maxim Micic, Earthside, Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Country: Romania
Review by: Vince
Release date: 4 April 2025

Prose is the gravity by which stories anchor their readers. Cool concepts or complex characters won’t survive if the foundation upon which they rest—this voice—betrays them. After all, how can we engage with possible depths and merits if we can’t keep our feet on the ground long enough to dig? Concept albums are not dissimilar from books: They are built around character, drama, themes and, ultimately, a story complete with beginning, middle, and end. Music and lyrics provide the gravity. Or, possibly, a lack thereof.

Enter, our subject: Telluric Inharmonies, the sophomore full-length from Romanian avant-garde-ians, Hteththemeth. Their Bandcamp promo announces “70+ minutes of … an epic multilingual story … filled with dramatic progressive metal, intense spoken word passages, [and] dynamic musical shifts.” For fans who’ve patiently been champing at the bit (it’s been nine years since debut Best Worst Case Scenario), no doubt these words evoke great excitement. For this first-timer, it’s enough to get my boots on the ground, but will Hteththemeth be able to keep me there?

“A!” sets us amidst the soothing crash of waves and brief narration in Romanian, the intro establishing its narrative intentions swiftly. War horns and epic chanting follow before breaking against a swirly, synth-baked passage, where we get our first taste of the album’s multilingual voice. “Why the guilty one does not pay for his sins?” our narrator beseeches God. I feel my feet leaving the ground. “It’s only the intro,” I remind myself. Rough starts do not always beget rough journeys. However, as I dug deeper into Telluric Inharmonies, I found my lactose intolerance flaring up something fierce.

I’ve switched analogies, I know. We’re talking cheese now.

Normally, I’m rather fond(ue) of the dairy industrial complex—I grew up on a healthy diet of Euro-power and symphonic metal during my formative years and am no stranger to the endearing cheesiness prog occasionally orbits. Goofy lyrics can be forgiven if the music slaps hard enough, and it’s here Hteththemeth fights to anchor the listener: the instrumentation is often engaging, providing swells of dramatic heft and grandiose compositions that bring to mind some of the neoclassical verve and operatic aspirations of 90s-era Savatage (“The Fools and Failed Queens”), while elsewhere tinkling post-rock guitar lines buried beneath crunchy rhythms reward deeper listening (“Honest Lies,” “The Odyssey of Nothing”). And whenever vocalist Lao Kreegan slips into Romanian, it rolls with a naturalism and strength that begins to restore gravity. However…

Most of the album is performed in English, a decision which infects the proceedings with levels of unintended awkwardness that unmoored me constantly. This reaches its unfortunate apotheosis on the beguiling “I Buy Her Presence,” sounding like a violent collision of indie-folk and a direly chipper anime outro. It’s a jarring inclusion which feels alien amidst the baroque splendor of “The Fools and Failed Queens” or the Distant Dream-esque post-prog explorations of “The Odyssey of Nothing.” Elsewhere and everywhere, the spoken word passages bookending every proper song commit frequent violence upon the album’s flow, halting momentum constantly while providing little value to the overall experience. Only the intro (“A!”) and outro (“O!”) feel vital, with the latter’s sonic callbacks to the former propagating the idea of a narrative—even if the multilingual approach and discordant tracklisting offer no real sense of a cohesive journey. Thus, Inharmonies feels, well… lacking harmony as a whole.

That said, Telluric Inharmonies is not a bad record, per se. The music is full of lively movements and a fair share of emotive storytelling buoyed by a light and airy production, empowering much of the charm and whimsy encapsulated within. (Codrut ‘Codrez’ Costea’s drumming is of particular merit throughout). Despite my criticism of the lyrics and their delivery, Kreegan himself is a fine vocalist when anchored in the right places. His voice is colorful and able to conjure earworm melodies with frightening ease, with the storytelling gusto needed to match the theatricality of the music. Though his experiments don’t always pay off, I applaud his fearlessness when it comes to pushing comforts. Were the English lyrics to be tightened up or switched to Romanian entirely, I would endorse a future release without hesitation; such is Kreegan’s ability to impart feeling through the texture of his voice that I feel little would be lost in the (non-)translation.

Hteththemeth is a talented crew with the potential to whip up a tasty musical morsel. Sadly, Telluric Inharmonies’ voice presents a foundation too uneven for this reviewer to stand on, despite the album’s undeniable charisma and creative outreach. Those with a higher tolerance for the ol’ lyrical cheddar may find themselves more than sated by this second serving, but for my money I’ll have to send it back to the kitchen.

Final verdict: 5/10

Review by: Andy

Let it be known: ambition is never overlooked here at the Subway. Romanian act Hteththemeth’s new album Telluric Inharmonies was independently bookmarked by not one, not two, but three of our authors (because we’re incapable of using the search function on our spreadsheet), and the project is a behemoth. A seventy-minute, twenty-one track, multi-language concept album, Telluric Inharmonies is intimidating to approach; exacerbating the matter, Hteththemeth call their style “unhuman music,” and I’m human, so I don’t even know if I’m legally allowed to listen. Alas, for such an over-the-top project, one of us had to review it out of principle, and I drew the short end of the straw. 

So what does unhuman music sound like, anyway? Well, it’s surprisingly human, replete with one-note vocals, your average djent-y guitar parts, and keys to provide “atmosphere” that really do not much at all. The track title of “The Odyssey of Nothing” is a self-fulfilling prophecy for the whole project. Telluric Inharmonies is vapid, poorly paced, boring, and unimaginative. I knew I was in for the long haul when the first track “A!” did precisely nada for over four minutes—bland ambience and spoken word, aside. We have those in spades across Telluric Inharmonies with around twenty minutes of pointless interludes. Sandwiched between pretty much every “real” song on the album, the interludes absolutely kill any momentum Hteththemeth manage to build up. For instance, “Li(f)e” hints at a climax of sorts through its djenty outro, but then “A Șasea Zi” decides a full minute and a half of spoken word is the right call; spoiler alert, it has never been the right call on any album ever in the history of albums.

So let’s ignore the twenty minutes of pointless filler and focus on the meatier parts, shall we? The heavier hitting tracks are just plain weird, but not in an “unhuman” way, more in a “why would you mix djent with a dance music flavor with repetitive vocal lines” way. Despite the djent-y aspect of the guitars, the music never really gets heavy at all, instead opting for a sort of liminal state in between generic prog rock and metal, just aimless chugging riffs with no bite—we’ve all heard the type of amorphous style Hteththemeth plays. However, the guest cellist and pianist are quite lovely when they’re utilized, providing a more mature sound to the project than the synthesized djent; in fact, the compositions can be rather beautiful (“I Wanted You All,” “The Poetry of Failure,” “Adoriel Is Watching”). When Hteththemeth write honest-to-god songs and not dumb interludes, particularly with professional instrumentalists, they achieve far more than they do when they try to stretch themselves to be weird and unhuman—that always manifests as them trying too hard to be different. 

Regrettably, I don’t have access to the lyrics, so I cannot possibly keep track of a multi-language concept, but even if they taled the most heart-wrenching story I’d ever heard on a prog album, they couldn’t save Telluric Inharmonies from its glut. Hteththemeth flew too close to the sun here and crashed and burned like Therion on every release post-2012—that’s the tale of a band whose overly long, bombastic concept albums have been laughably bad for ages, for those who don’t keep up with the symphonic metal pioneers. Telluric Harmonies is the sad story of a band full of ambition and quirk but not quite able to avoid tumbling into cliché on their Icarian descent.

Hteththemeth are right to call themselves enigmatic, but there’s simply nothing to gain from deciphering this incoherent sonic puzzle. Try as I might to find redeeming aspects on my listens, there are no catchy melodies nor standout choruses, no dazzling solos nor grand climaxes, so everything washes over you, leaving only the bad taste of interludes. Hteththemeth ambitiously try to soar into ‘unhuman’ territory, but instead end up floating aimlessly in a string of interludes and bland progressive rock.

Recommended tracks: Honest Lies, The Fools and Failed Queens, The Odyssey of Nothing, I Wanted You All, The Poetry of Failure
You may also like: Pagan’s Mind, The Chronomaster Project, Destiny Potato, Seventh Station, Rise of the Architect, Vitam Aeternam, Max Enix, Dreamwalkers Inc
Final verdict: 3/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram | Facebook | Metallum

Label: Layered Reality Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook | Website

Hteththemeth is:
LÄO KREEGAN – vocals and lyrics
VLAD-ANDREI ONESCU – piano, keyboards & FX, backing vocals
LUCIAN POPA – guitars, backing vocals
RADU CÎNDEA “CJ” – guitars, backing vocals
MIHAI RĂDULESCU “KOLDR”– bass guitar, backing vocals
CODRUȚ COSTEA “CODREZ” – drums and percussion

Featuring the guest musicians:
Alexandra Enache – Cello
Eric-Andrei Costea – Piano
Crina Marinescu – Vocals
Flavia Dobre – Vocals

The post Double Review: Hteththemeth – Telluric Inharmonies appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive black metal, folk black metal (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Negura Bunget, Enslaved, Heilung, Moonsorrow, Thy Catafalque
Country: Romania
Release date: 30 August 2024

At its core, genre is a reflection of culture: a framework for a specific moment in artistic and societal time. Genre evolves and shifts as do the values underlying them; they capture the zeitgeist. For example, what’s labeled as metal today isn’t the rock your dad delighted in because the artistic and musical expressions have gone far beyond a tritone or two and some distortion come the digital age. Likewise, I could quibble about how Sur Austru elegantly mix black metal, progressive metal, and folk music, but I opine that they simply write Romanian music, an amalgamation of their musical heritage, cultural traditions, and pride for their nation as a musical love letter to Romania; however, genre isn’t why we’re all here, it’s for quality, inspired music: do Sur Austru fit the bill?

For context, out of the skeleton of classic Romanian atmospheric black metal band and cornerstone of Eastern European metal Negurǎ Bunget sprung two amazing successors: Dordeduh and Sur Austru, both of which I discovered with their magnificent 2021 releases, Har and Obârsie, respectively. While both bands provided excellent first impressions, Dordeduh had a clear edge with their refined, progressive songwriting and more crystalline production qualities. Datura Străhiarelor closes the gap. Distilled passion forms Sur Austru’s third album; to start, Sur Austru is a community-driven effort, its cover art painted by carefully-chosen, local artist Bogdan Tigan and its lyrics penned by the young Romanian poet Călin Miclauș, taleing years of dedicated studies into Romanian folklore and mystical traditions—particularly of its eschatology—and the performance is, of course, performed in their native tongue.

Beyond exterior aesthetics, we’re treated to a wealth of instruments, ranging from the traditional metal band (plus flute) to a regional ensemble featuring the toacǎ (Orthodox liturgical percussion instrument), bucium (style of alphorn/bugle), nai (pan flute), and woodblock (percussion). My hesitation to reduce Datura Străhiarelor to mere metal is how well Sur Austru intertwine the folk and metal, closing in on the levels of compositional brilliance of Aquilus’s elegant neoclassical black metal. Elements of black metal suffuse Datura Străhiarelor as a remnant of Negurǎ Bunget, but the metallic sounds serve to emphasize the traditional music, forcing it to be punchier through distortion, adding a heft to morph the delicate, fluty Romanian folk sounds to something closer to the proto-Germanic paganry of Heilung. The greatest strength of Sur Austru’s sound on Datura Străhiarelor, though, is the percussion in its cascading, hypnotic (though never outright repetitive) patterns, building each song’s intensity from cavernous, brooding skin-beatings all the way up to crashing blast beats. Nearly every track builds in this fashion to swirling, sublime crescendos, using the drums’ increasingly speedy ritualistic pounding to mark their progress. These climaxes are certainly the highlights of the album, the culmination of storytelling lyrically and musically, yet, as grandiose sections often are, it’s through their context in which they work best, provided in the form of hazy atmospheres.

Every track on Datura Străhiarelor contains several psychedelic folk sections, flowing in transcendent swaths of new age-y flutes over nature sounds—birds chittering and thunderstorms—and atmospheric synths, conjuring the aura of an alpine trek through the Carpathians, a Romantic gesture through its simple pastoralism. These alternating and layered streams of psychedelia and intricate metal riffing create long, progressive, and meandering tracks, the songwriting exuding both the power and ease of the natural world and the heaviness of death and destruction. For example, intro “Arătarea” has birds chirping, the epic, foreboding war-cries of the bucium, and ends with a triumphant pagan guitar part. “Strânsura” has chants with an air Moonsorrow in the style choice before switching to complex alternate picking at 4:20; the flutes share the lead with the guitars in the bombastic ending sequence. Other tracks lull with a dreamlike quality such as “Cele Rele” or the women’s choir clinching the end of “Fărmăcarea.” On a less serious note, the booming “OOH-AH”s of “Împărăcherea” sound like the boys are working in a dwarven forge, the imagery certainly funny—still epic. 

The sole thing holding Sur Austru back is its lack of memorable melodies. In its fifty-four minute journey through dreams and the end of the world, Sur Austru cover a lot of ground and, obviously, beautifully integrate Romanian music into metal. However, Sur Austru can get a bit lost in the atmosphere—certainly not a problem on its own as their rhythm section and psychedelic tinge more than hold their own—but I feel like even the heroic climaxes lack a certain extra melodic oomph that Dordeduh have mastered. In this regard, Datura Străhiarelor almost functions as a brighter foil to The Ruins of Beverast with its occult, percussive buildups and effortless endowing of magnitude through sweeping structure choices. Despite its slightly lacking melodies, Sur Austru are vastly improved songwriters. 

More progressive and even more Romanian, Datura Străhiarelor handily improves on Obârşie. With an impeccable sense of ebb and flow, Sur Austru do justice to their love of their country, and I want more bands to celebrate their local artists while incorporating regional tradition in their music rather than blindly imitating what’s popular in the West (ie USA and UK). Sur Austru are authentic, and the heartfelt nature of Datura Străhiarelor is obvious: this was laboriously made, and Sur Austru’s passion pays dividends.

Recommended tracks: Cele Rele, Fărmăcarea
You may also like: Dordeduh, The Ruins of Beverast, Thragedium, Finsterforst, Aquilus
Final verdict: 8.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Avantgarde Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Sur Austru is:
– Ovidiu Corodan (Bass, Toacă, Vocals)
– Mihai Florea (Guitars, Bucium, Vocals)
– Ionut Cadariu (Keyboards, Flute, Nai, Vocals)
– Tibor Kati (Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards, Bucium)
– Beni Ursulescu (Drums, Vocals)
– Paul Marcu (percussion)
– Călin Puticiu (Percussion, Woodblock)
– Călin Miclauș (lyrics)

The post Review: Sur Austru – Datura Străhiarelor appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Atmospheric/Folk Black Metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Behemoth, Bathory, Agalloch
Country: Romania
Release date: 26 November 2021

There’s something primal about winter. The growing nights and fall in temperature must trigger some long-dormant instinct in the mammalian brains leaving us longing for warmth, firesides and the safety of numbers. We bar our doors against the dark and cold and gather together, banishing all thought of shadows that move in the night. As a genre, atmospheric and folk black metal seems almost tailor-made to tap into this part of our collective psyches. It speaks to the part of us that live and die by nature’s whims and harkens to the longest and forgotten parts of our history where shamans and the wise communed with spirits living in the primordial wildernesses. It seems like a psychological itch many of us want to scratch: Anecdotally, there certainly seems to be a rise in popularity of folk metal bands that embrace elements of pagan spirituality into their aesthetic, sound or ideology. So, as the winter solstice approaches (for those of us in the northern hemisphere), why not spin up an album that addresses the spiritual aspects of nature in all its brutal splendour?

Zău is the eighth (and possibly final) album by Negură Bunget. It is the finale in the band’s “Transylvanian Trilogy”, a labour of love by a grieving band, and a swansong from a central figure in the metal community. The album almost never saw the light of day when Gabriel “Negru” Mafa suffered a fatal heart attack in 2017. Negru was the only remaining original member of the band and the creative driving force behind their ever-evolving sound. It was Negru who expanded the band’s line up and opened up the band to using traditional instruments in order to breathe life into his opus: The “Transylvanian Trilogy” of albums. Miraculously, Negru’s drum tracks for the final part of the trilogy, Zău, had already been laid down before his death. Rather than letting the tryptic remain incomplete, the remaining members of the band painstakingly gathered all the tracks and built them into a final album to complete the Transylvanian Trilogy and create a tribute to Negru.

The band’s sense of loss is apparent even in the album art designed by Daniel Dorobanţu. It depicts a snowy forest surrounded by white; the negative space shaping the forest into the spectral silhouette of a figure’s head and shoulders, wearing a crown of sticks and branches. The image is almost the opposite of the album cover of Negură Bunget’s previous album, Zi, which features a man in profile wearing a crown of sticks, but against a black background. With this in mind, the image speaks of absence in its negative space while paying tribute to the Romanian wilderness that is central to the band’s ideology.

The opening track “Brad” (a 15-minute epic and possible nod to Negru’s side project Din Brad), opens with Petrică Ionuţescu playing a scattered and haunting piece on the nai, overlayed with ghostly whispers before giving way to a slow, clean guitars, and atmospheric synth laying down the foundation of a soundscape. Gorgeous, clean vocals lilt over the soundscape as a herald of the heavy guitar riffs and darker vocals to come. Counterbalancing the lengthy, atmospheric tone-poems are some more metal-oriented tracks that hark back to vintage Negură Bunget. “Obrăzar” gives us a huge riff that you can stick your teeth into layered with a fanfare of synth that give the track an almost Behemoth-esque quality. And “Tinerețe Fără Bătrânețe” has one of the best slow doom-laden riffs that I’ve heard on an album this year.

The final track, “Toacă Din Cer” is one of the most interesting and affecting; Opening with a short instrumental by Negru and then launching into a triumphant blaze of metal. All the elements that made the Transylvanian Trilogy special layer one upon the other. Of all the songs on the album, this one feels like a celebration of life. Until, ultimately, the track draws to a close. Petrică Ionuţescu plays Negură Bunget out with a horn solo faintly reminiscent of “The Last Stand”.

Zău works as a beautiful album in itself, but it’s worth considering it as part of a trilogy as well as in isolation. Zău manages to tread the tightrope of being a clear part of a trilogy both thematically and musically as well as having its own identity as an album. The first album of the trilogy, Tau, uses folk elements to directly contrast with the band’s black metal sound, creating a jarring, dissonant voyage of an album. The second album, Zi (the most experimental in the trilogy), builds on Tau and adds softer elements of undistorted guitar and clean vocals into the mix. Zău contrasts with Tau directly by making more of an effort to blend, layer and find harmony between the folk and metal tones. It also incorporates some of the elements from Zi and works to integrate it. Leaving us with a richly varied album that ushers us through beautiful ambient soundscapes, to howling death metal, to calm lacunae of folk instrumentation.

Though Zău is largely successful in building layer upon layer of tone to create an atmospheric ambiance, there are some moments where the mix becomes too crowded. The end of “Brad” makes the unfortunate shift from layered soundscape to cacophony and the gestalt value of the layered instruments is lost. The vocals often sound quite low in the mix, though this may be a convention of the genre. These nit-picking criticisms are, perhaps, forgivable when one remembers the context of the album and the fact that the drum tracks at least are cobbled together from Negru’s recordings and demos.

With the context of the album in mind, the bleak melancholy in many of the tracks on Zău are all the more poignant, the primal spiritual elements all the more potent. This doesn’t feel like just an album; it’s a paganistic funeral rite recorded to album. Researching the origin of this work gives more and more opportunities to appreciate the beauty and thought that went into crafting it. Understanding the short percussion pieces at the end of Tinerețe Fără Bătrânețe and the start of Toacă Din Cer which are played in were recorded by Negru – who would never live to hear the album complete gives significant pause for thought. They are almost moments of meditation mid-album listening to Negru play in isolation; echoing beautifully before fading into silence.

Negură Bunget’s Zău is many things: a beautiful album, a completion of a trilogy, swansong and tribute. I’m hard pressed to think of a more atmospheric, beautiful and emotional album to tap into that part of the subconscious mind that makes us bar our doors against the dark outside and wonder, just slightly, about the shadows moving out there in the wilderness.

RIP, Negru.

Recommended tracks: The whole thing. Though, favourites were Tinerețe Fără Bătrânețe and Toacă Din Cer
You may also like: Dordeduh, Phendrana, Windfaerer
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Metal-Archives page

Label: Lupus Lounge – Website | Facebook

Negură Bunget was:
– Gabriel “Negru” Mafa (drums, percussion, dulcimer, horns, xylophone)
– Tibor Kati (vocals, guitar, keyboards, programming)
– Adrian “OQ” Neagoe (guitar, vocals, keyboards)
– Petrică Ionuţescu (nai, flute, horns)
– Ovidiu Corodan (bass)

The post Review: Negură Bunget – Zău appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive atmospheric black/folk metal (mixed vocals, Romanian lyrics)
Review by: Sam
Recommended for fans of: Enslaved, Agalloch, (late) Nokturnal Mortum
Country: Romania
Release date: 14 May, 2021

One of the most unique albums I’ve ever come across to is OM by the Romanian band Negura Bunget. It’s a haunting, atmospheric black metal record with lots of Romanian folk and progressive song structures that really transported you into another dimension of a Transylvanian vampire thriller, best served at candlelight. It somewhat lacked in the emotional catharsis department for me, but the atmosphere was so well done I didn’t care. The album has become a cult (or should I say, kvlt) classic at this point, and rightly so. Unfortunately, the band disbanded in 2017. Fortunately though two ex-members went on to form a new band which is the subject of this review.

Dordeduh is a band that very much continues the spirit of NB. This record is filled with similarly sprawling song structures, an emphasis on folky atmosphere, and a very hypnotic guitar tone that sounds like it could have come straight out of OM. However unlike NB, Dordeduh actually make an effort to please the listener instead of just being abrasive all the time, introducing many soothing elements as clean vocals and melodic synth patches. In fact, I’d hardly call the band abrasive at all. The polished production really smooths out the unsettling vibe that NB had. Har sounds very warm and spacious. The record is an excellent example of how black metal can sound great with higher production values without sacrificing its core identity.

Something I also find Dordeduh to be much more successful in than Negura Bunget is the general songwriting. They don’t settle just for compelling atmosphere, but also add in more visceral, immediate elements to connect with the listener. There are some colossal riffs on this album that just grab you by the gutter, with a matching intensity in the vocal performance that wouldn’t be out of place on a death metal album. The atmosphere is also a bit more epic and cinematic in nature, mostly thanks to the background synths. Not in a cheesy way. It’s more dreamy and inviting than in your face. All in all it’s an added sense of drama that really elevates the music for me beyond what NB accomplished. The singing is also very soothing and heartfelt, evoking romantic images of nature and pagan traditions, and also giving an extra emotional dimension to the music. This album is more so a campfire ritual with psychedelics than a sense of vampires lurking around every corner to kill you and drink your blood out of fancy wine glasses, if that makes sense.

But Negura Bunget comparisons aside, this album is just stunning in its own right. Something I always really appreciate is when a band can make an album feel like more than a sum of its songs, and Har does that in spades. Not that these tracks are lacking in their own right (far from it!), but the overall sense of narrative in the music is stunning. Har really feels like you’re watching a movie with how the songwriting ebbs and flows in intensity. Be it the atmosphere, the riffs, or the proggy parts, it’s all super captivating. It has the journey and the big payoffs. Time flies by whenever I listen to this record, both for background and for active listening.

I feel like this review is a bit short, but there’s nothing more for me to say really. Har is just a stunning work of art. It starts out already great, and gets even better with every subsequent listen. Due to its lighter nature and smooth production, it’s accessible for black metal and non black metal listeners alike. It’s a wonderful cinematic, atmospheric journey, and honestly would also be a very solid black metal introduction for those put off by the genre’s more abrasive aspects. This album does everything I ever wanted from Negura Bunget, and more. It remains to be seen where it’ll end up on my personal list, but as far as musical objectivity is a thing, this is the best album I’ve reviewed all year. Well done fellas.

Recommended tracks: Timpul Întâilor, Desferecat, De Neam Vergur
You may also like: Negura Bunget, Sur Austru, Maladie
Final verdict: 9.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Metal-Archives page

Label: Lupus Lounge – Website

Dordeduh is:
– Hupogrammos (vocals, guitars, keyboards, mandola, tulnic)
– Sol Faur (guitars, keyboards, hammered dulcimer)
– Flavius Misarăș (bass, backing vocals)
– Putrid (drums, percussion, toacă)

The post Review: Dordeduh – Har appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive Metal, Melodic Metal, Alternative Metal (mixed vocals)
Review by: Mike
Country: Romania
Release date: 23 October, 2020

Serendipitous connections that lead to little discoveries are always fun.

At a previous job with a software company, I had the pleasure of working with a group of developers from Romania. We’d meet every morning via video chat from separate continents and everyone I met there was incredibly nice. So when I saw a promo from an unfamiliar Romanian band, those pleasant memories came back and felt like as good a reason as any to check them out. The seventh most populated country in the EU may not be a hot bed for headbanging but White Walls may just prove to be a pleasant surprise.

Grandeur is their 3rd album over the last decade or so, and first since 2013. I would describe their sound as melodic progressive metal in the vein of The Contortionist or Voyager with heavier/harsh elements mixed in that would draw comparisons to bands like The Ocean or Textures. The songs on Grandeur tend to be structured in a more traditional verse-chorus-verse style. The progginess comes in the form of some well placed time signature/rhythmic/dynamic changes to keep things interesting. A 70/30 mix of clean to harsh vocals also adds to the diversity, along with a contrast between atmospheric, crystalline sections and fat, groovy, almost djenty riffs.

I was legitimately surprised by the production quality of the album. Unlike a lot of underground bands, White Walls had the good fortune to work with an established producer in Forrester Savell, who has previously worked with bands like Karnivool, Animals As Leaders, Dead Letter Circus, Good Tiger, and Skyharbor. Having Forrester mix and master Grandeur was a good decision as the album sounds polished, professional, and contemporary in comparison to other modern metal. The mix is balanced and spacious, the guitars are crisp & chunky, the bass feels thick & substantial, the drums are sharp without being overbearing, and the vocals are nicely layered.

The single “Eye For An I” is a good representation of what I think the band is trying to achieve by combining a few different styles. The track’s intro and first verse could pass as a new-era Mastodon track; a half-time feel heavy drone with harmonically dissonant guitar transitions to uptempo drums and quick-moving power chords with harsh vocals. The chorus drops the tempo back down again but introduces a very clean melody that floats above the band. They then ramp back up but switch to a more groovy approach showing their versatility. After another verse & chorus, they show their understanding of dynamics by building tension with a sparse drum roll & guitar. They continue the swell to a fever pitch with intense vocals and fierce drums before dropping almost all instrumentation for the dramatic return of the chorus.

White Walls isn’t reinventing the wheel with anything on this album but they are displaying that they have a good understanding of the subtleties that make for interesting and compelling music. The songs aren’t all exceptional. There are a few tracks that I might describe as filler but even in those instances the overall attention to detail keeps you listening without losing interest. While I’m not very familiar with their previous output, on the surface it appears that they have improved their core songwriting and will hopefully continue that trend on future albums.

All in all, the more time I spend with Grandeur, the more impressed I am with this album. Ultimately I would recommend the album to those who tend to lean more towards melodic rock & metal versus those that are looking for more complex prog. So if you appreciate well produced, refined melodic metal, then just go on ahead and give Grandeur a try, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Recommended tracks: Eye For An I, Starfish Crown, Marche Funèbre
Recommended for fans of: The Contortionist, Voyager, Textures
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Metal-Archives page

Label: Independant

White Walls is:

– Alexandru-Eduard Dascălu – guitar
– Eugen Brudaru – vocals
– Șerban-Ionuț Georgescu – bass
– Theo Scrioșteanu – drums

The post Review: White Walls – Grandeur appeared first on The Progressive Subway.