Well, thank you! With this album I think we achieved that ability to put a rich spiritual content on the musical level. There’s usually a bit of a gap between lyrics and music, but this time I’d say we managed this balance really well. We first did the lyrics and then sometime we tried to actually put them in music bit by bit. This was an album we need we had to do one day, so we just waited the right moment to do it.

Your previous album was more immediate to understand, very deep in its emotions, but more "straight", this one is more complex, a lot on the drums, where is the reason and the motivation for this?

Apart of the normal evolution, I’d say they are quite different albums. We always tried to transpose into music a well crafted concept, and the concepts of those albums are very different too. While "Maiastru sfetnic" was all about an ideal Black Metal based world, "’N crugu bradului" is about the essences of the Romanian traditional mentality. As a consequence, while "Maiastru" is a lot more Black, and allusive, "’N crugu bradului" is more direct, open, near... Of course, in the end they both converge in a common direction, as we always found a special connection between the local spiritual immanence and the essences of Black Metal.

I’ve heard a sort of hypnotic-trascendental feeling on your last album, but also in your mini-cd "Sala Molska", is that a trade-mark of your band?

Being something that became up in our music naturally, I think it could be considered as some characteristic of our music. As I said, it’s not so much intentionally as it is naturally, we never explicitly wanted to compose such thing, they just surfaced naturally, and we saw them very well fitted.

Do you feel influenced by other non-metal music? 

We fell influenced in different ways not just by non-metal music, but by spirituality, nature... everything important you relate to can influence not only your music, but you path as an individual. We’re not in Black Metal just for the sake of fun, we see it as a chance for out spiritual evolution

I’ve seen the incredible video you’ve done, there are a lot of visions, landscapes, do you still hear this strong connection with territory?

Yes, I think so. We decided just on the last minute to do that clip, so we had time & finances just for a few filming expeditions. But there’s a lot more on this area I hope we’ll show you one day... I’d say with the evolution of our music we cultivated an even stronger connection with the local natural and spiritual landscapes. So it’s not just a natural impulse, it’s something dear to us that we try to cultivate intentionally. It’s just a pity we don’t always have the time to go there as much as we’d like to...

What’s special in the most remote places of nature, it’s the calm, the sensation of ecstatic calm that carry deep immersions and the mind to travel?

I’d say everybody has some inner tendencies. Some feel this close connection with the nature, some with other things. We just feel home over there, lost in the deep of nature. It not only gives us a higher calm, but also an inner strength to go further.

I’ve heard of something very original and unusual with a digi-pack version that you’re creating together with your label... are you trying to give to your fans a piece of your land, what’s the meaning?

We prepared quite a special packaging for the album. We call it digipak box, though in reality it’s quite different from anything I ever saw. It’s also a lot bigger than a digipak, it’s more like a DVD cover. There’s also that something extra, a symbolic passing piece... but I guess everybody should experience it on its o

Witch are for you the roots of your Country heritage and tradition that you feel represented in Negura Budget?

This is quite a complicated question to answer. I think I could better explain everything using our last album as example. The four songs try to offer a "complete" cyclic view upon this Romanian spirituality seen as a whole, by completing a full 4-season cycle, a 1-year period in which you can undergo a "metaphorical" initiatic travel though this spirituality. Different kinds traditions, practices and beliefs are joined together to offer our view upon this fundament. We wanted from the very beginning to make this album about the Romanian spirituality seen more or less as a whole. There was no specific theme of it, but more like about its overall characteristics. Back to your answer, I’d say feel connected with a whole, not with pieces of it. Local (not only Romanian, but going far beyond that) spirituality and history is something fundamental for us as a band. So we try to represent as much as we can though our musical involvement. There’s of course a high censure on everything, cause there are so many things.

Your singer use some unusual clean vocal lines... have they any connection with your motherland folk tradition?

Yes, those clean vocals are backed also by the most traditional lyrical and music parts from the album. We choose doing them like that, after some hard debates on the matter, especially due the lyrical content. This was again a very thin balance for us, as we didn’t want everything to sound plain Folk music, but to keep the Black Metal feeling. It would have been a lot easier just to use direct traditional music, but that was never our intention.

Is there any folk artist from your country that you respect and are you in connection with other personalities of that world?

We symbolically dedicated our last album to Tudor Gheorghe. He’s a Romanian artist (playing music, doing some kind of popular traditional theatrical plays...), and he also did lat year a concept series of albums around the 4 seasons, seen from a different perspective though, as a mixture between popular and classic music. But we’re not that much in direct connection with such persons. There are also not that many persons to do something worth of respect. We’re more into traditional Romanian music, played by anonymous peasants. There are some amazing compilations of such music. As I’m also studying right now for my doctoral degree in Romanian folklore I’d say I’m also more in connection with some personalities from the theoretical side of the matter, people studying the Romanian folklore as a science. It very nice to know both sides, the study but also the concrete experience.

Have you ever thought to strongly involve traditional folk instrument on your composition?

Yes, we thought a lot on this subject, and I think we’ll use some more such instruments on our future releases. Even on the last album we used a bit of a panpipe (tulnic) and even some xylophone parts. But we had to be very carefully and not to exaggerate. We consider Negura Bunget a Black Metal band, and we wanted to keep it this way.

You also have a ‘Zine that you keep alive with great dedication, this means that you search for something inner, but isn’t sometimes a bit difficult to find the same sensibility?

I started the zine with the clear intention of exploring not only the music, but what’s behind it, the concept that makes its value higher. Of course, that’s not something you can easily find on the present metal scene, but in the end this makes the whole effort even more meaningful. Cause when you discover that band with a meaningful musical and spiritual discourse, it’s a special moment. We also tried from the very beginning not to limit the magazine only to interviews/reviews, but to expand a lot into articles, visual arts... Of course there’s a lot we still have to work on, but I’d say we’re on the right path. For now we’re about to release issue 4 of Negura Magazine, featuring interviews with Primordial, The Kovenant, Thunderbolt, Ordo Draconis, Trollech, Nokturnal Mortum, Limbonic Art, Tormentor, Enid, Void of Silence, Thee Maldoror Kollective, Obtest, Meridian, Astray... some articles on: Aspects of Traditional Mentality, Equinoxes and Solstices, Native North American Mythology. You can find more about everything on www.negura.ro.

What do you think of the horror-like mediocre simplification of your Country tourism running on the typical distorted Hollywood-like picture... aren’t tour digging deeper to the ancestors?

Well, it’s quite a sad situation. Even the Romania Ministry of Tourism discovered lately that the whole campaign they did centred around Dracula was in fact less effective that the fascination itself for our dictator Ceausescu, which brought here more tourists. It’s a sad situation both ways. We’re now just trying here to adopt the same superficial approach the Occident had, just in order to get those idiotic full of money tourists over here. They even want to build a Dracula Park here...

What do you remember of the early primordial days of black metal... what’s changed for you and for the other band that where playing that music?

Fortunately we tend not to be influenced by the not so fortunate evolutions changing the Black Metal. We more or less have the same ideas as when we started. They evolved a lot, we en-deepen the things quite a lot, but we never gave up our initial ideas. This may be also due to us being from Romania. Around here things happen slowly than on most of the world, so there were not that many outside things to force us change.

Is there any interesting Romanian band that you wish to suggest?

There are some interesting Romanian bands worth of checking out, like Thy Veils (Dark/Ambient), Psychosymphony (amazing Progressive/Death/Thrash) or Vokodlok (Death/Black).

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