Their band name stands for “black foggy forest” in some form of archaic Romanian, they hail from Transylvania, they play old school Black Metal and the lyrics revolve around paganism, vampirism with a pinch of Satanism. If you feel like your reviewer just served you with the worst possible cliché about early 90’s Negură Bunget manifested in the form of the album Zîrnindu-să, then you’re absolutely right.

First and foremost, musically Zîrnindu-să is one excellent piece of old school Black Metal. The raw production creates the impression of a haunting and uncomfortable overall sound emerging straight from the depths of Hell through the over-pressurized valves of the thick Transylvanian forest. But as soon as you scratch the surface you’ll find some fast, high pitched and extremely tight guitar playing with some interesting tempo changes. This sustains a good balance between aggression, atmosphere and melody. The drumming is intense as well, gently following the turmoil of the lead guitar. On top of it all is the voice, tormented Burzum-like unholy screams. All this is true for the 1996 version of the album which was released exclusively on tape and a copy of which your reviewer proudly possesses. Later reissues of the album come with more enhanced keyboards which bring in some hints of Emperor and put a much stronger emphasis on the atmosphere, unfortunately in the detriment of the aggressiveness. The lyrics are an extremely appealing bundle of famous vampire-related clichés about Transylvania told in a pseudo-archaic form of Romanian language of which it is difficult to say whether it really existed or is just pure fantasy.

Besides being one hell of an intense listening experience, Zîrnindu-să is also a very important album both for the band - as it is THE album that defined the distinctive Negură Bunget sound – as well as for the entire extreme Metal scene where it first saw the light of day.