by BBG

Hellooo busy spring! Romanian black metal crew Negura Bunget will play a string of European dates with Primordial in early March, but shortly after will embark on a US tour the surrounding their appearance at Maryland Death Fest. Joining them on the trek will be Eclipse Eternal, Wolven Ancestry and The Way of Purity, and their set of dates kick off with an April 20th apeparance at Cameo. Tickets are on sale.

Negura Bunget released their last LP, Focul Viu, in 2011 and Vîrstele Pamîntului in the year prior. The band's breakout OM LP was released in 2006 via the now-defunct Enucleation Records. All tour dates, some video and the tour flyer is below.

Continue reading "Negura Bunget touring the US surrounding MDF (dates)"

intro by BBG, interview by Kogaionon, English translation of that interview & the rest of the story by Stefan Raduta

Dordeduh with guest percussionist Thelemnar

Stefan Raduta is no stranger to the darkness. As a writer with Metal Maniacs, Imhotep, and many other outlets, the Romanian born scribe has profiled and reviewed some of the biggest and most influential names in the blackened depths of extreme music. In the following piece Stefan examines black metal and its current move toward transcendentalism and then focuses on his Romanian countrymen, black metal band Negura Bunget, and their fracture into Dordeduh. He concludes with an interview with Dordeduh (ex-NB) member Hupogrammos. The interview was originally conducted by another writer in his native tongue and translated for us by Stefan. Check it all out below...

Continue reading "The Current State of Black Metal, Trancendental Black Metal, Negura Bunget & an interview w/ Dordeduh's Hupogrammos"

by JJ Koczan

We continue with JJ's report from Roadburn in Tilburg, Holland. If you missed it, you might want to start with Day One. Here is Day Two (Friday April 23, 2009)...

Cathedral LIVE at Roadburn (Erik Luyten)

It's really easy to tell as you walk around Tilburg who is here for Roadburn and who isn't. Even when I first got here from Amsterdam on the train, the front of the station looked like an Eyehategod show could have broken out at any minute, all the bearded longhairs and black t-shirts, including my own, standing around looking for a bus or a cab. Like some kind of convention for the International Society Of Social Awkwardness. But oh, we do have a good time.

The thing about the "doom scene," as much as there is one, is that it's really more of a community. Maybe it's because the majority of its patrons are a little older, a little more stoned, a little more concerned with paying their rent, but there are way fewer scene rules than, say, in black metal, where the contest to be more kvlt than thou goes on ceaselessly. Certainly there's a uniform -- see "beards and t-shirts," above -- but there are some normal looking dudes running around here and no one really gives a crap one way or the other what they look like. I'd say it's refreshing, but it's been this way for as long as I've been into doom, so it's nothing new.

This is easily the best festival I've ever seen. The fact that I'm here still astonishes me. Yesterday, as I watched Angel Witch demolish bands half their age (though Saviours would answer back heartily later on), I couldn't help but look around me and be amazed at the gathering of riff worshippers. The Atomic Bitchwax, for example, played to a Green Room so packed that people were lined up into the hallway watching them through the open doors. I've seen the Bitchwax plenty of times in our shared home state of New Jersey, and most of those shows have been relatively empty. Here you can barely go from one part of the venue to the next without doing a bump 'n grind on some poor schlub. It's something to get used to, but I made a conscious decision to take a different approach to day two than I had to day one.

continued below...

Continue reading "Surviving Roadburn, Day Two: Riding To The Sabbath"