FROM TERRORIZER MAGAZINE:
As you should already know, from having read the studio report latest issue of the world's baddest assest extreme metal magazine, I travelled to the Romanian capital of Bucharest at the end of January to spend some quality time with wild dogs, indoor smoking, curiously polite mosh pits, antisemetic taxi drivers, flights full of gypsies, and most importantly, drummer/percussionist NEGRU and NEGURA BUNGET's glorious new album, 'VIRSTELE PAMINTULUI', which while no massive departure from its critically spaffed predecessor 'OM', takes the four-wheel drive to the very top of the proverbial mountain instead of meandering up dirt path and stopping at the first picnic area.
How did all the new members come on board?
“Two people were already playing with us for quite a while; the percussionist guy, he's been doing some vocals, has been with us for five years, and the keyboard player, she was playing with us for two years. The singer played with us once live for a special DVD recording, so I know him, and I actually started working with him first on my other project, Din Brad, so I was talking with him when this thing [being, of course, the messy split of the band's two other core members from Negru] happened so I said, 'Lets come together as Negura'. The bass player, who's also the panpipe player, I knew him as well. I knew everybody and I felt, knowing them so deeply, that they could work together with us.”
Do you think it's brought something different?
“I wouldn't say it's completely different, it's just that for old Negura albums we tried to do different things – we never wanted to do an album just like the previous one, we tried to explore new things and it was always about the balance between the atmospheric and the aggressive.”
Has the drama died down?
“After that decision, everything was great for me. I didn’t care what they said. It’s their job and they’ll have to handle all of that. I think they feel bad for what they said.”
Have you kept in touch with Hupogrammos Disciple's and Sol Faur?
“Not really. Even after all they said, I don’t have any [beef] with them. But I’m not sure it’s the same vice versa.”
It made you look better by not getting involved.
“'It was not like that, it was not like this'. This does not help, because if one says, ‘You did this’, and you said, ‘No, you did it’, everything washes together and nothing good comes out of this. Again, we just wanted to focus on the music and have nothing to do with that.”
Do you still handle all of the band's business yourself?
“It seems like it, but we work together with different people, if we have a good booking agency we let them do it, but all the time I've felt that I could do it, not more professionally, but more our way because we don't want to do the 'business' kind of music and do the 'business tours', we want to do things well. It's difficult because we have a lot of people in the band and a lot of different instruments and stuff, we have to bring them. When we went to Hole In The Sky, we had to go by bus, everybody else was flying and we were on a bus! But for us it was more important because we could bring everything we needed to have on stage, so again I do the kind of work that I feel has to be done.”
What comes first in the writing process usually, the music or the concept?
“We had the general idea about the concept, we already had a few songs with the concept in them and it somehow grew together. We tried to keep all the tracks going so they were different, the concept influenced the music and the music influenced the concept.”
Do you think the music is more inclusive through using more general spiritual themes than actual history?
“I think some people are looking into these kind of things, they can be into the music or sometimes the music, it’s no necessarily about everything. That’s why we do it our way and let everybody understand it and read it there way. We don’t try to change people. It’s there doing. We throw in some ideas, but that’s all, the rest is up to them.”
Do you feel as though you’ve inspired people?
“A few people explored Romanian folklore because they got in contact with our music, yes, again, nothing major, just some people and for that I am also really happy. People write to me and ask me about certain books or something, and it's quite nice.”
How do you feel about tradition being abused by the far right?
“In the end, people do things for various reasons. And sometimes they know they are breaking with the right way and try to present something for what it is not. They have no other way to sell their ideas so they try to make a nice cover for it. It's a shame that some people don't see through that because it's very shallow. Even here in Romania there are some right wing movements who have a connection, maybe not with Romanian folklore so much, but more ancient spirituality. How could there have been any far right political movement a thousand years ago? How could you make the connection between these things? It goes beyond me.
“I don't have any problems with what people choose to do, that is their doing. I think that sometimes people try to see themselves as a part of that type of group. So even if I am not a Roman, maybe I would like to be and learn a bit more and sing about the Romans. But I'm not a Roman. I do have some understanding of that because sometimes there are people who actually have a connection and they try to explore it, and sometimes people don't have anything, they try to make something because they see it's interesting and nobody did it before, so lets do it and try to come up with a new kind of musical genre. For me there's no point, in the end everyone will describe the music in their own way.”
Do you feel part of the larger folk metal thing?
“We sometimes come close to this kind of movement, it's quite popular nowadays, but we don't really belong to that. If people try to put us there I don't have a problem with that, because some of those bands are really good bands and I'd like to see them live and play with them more often if possible.”
Enslaved have certainly managed to get a few fans from it while charting their own path.
“When I said there were some good bands, I was especially talking about Enslaved. They're not really that kind of band but they are somehow on the same level as the others, if we could somehow be associated like Enslaved are I'd have no problem!”
Thanks-Stay Metal, Stay Brutal-\m/ -l-
Posts
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.blogger.com/valid-rss-rogers.png "Validate my RSS feed")
