Band: ASTRU / NAGAARUM
Country: Hungary
Title: ...a mizantropia es elidegenedes ujabb ertelmezesei...
Label: NGC Productions
Year: 2017
Style: Experimental Black Metal

Review:
I like very much what Nagaarum is doing with its experimental music, so having another such project from Hungary present on this split only aroused my interest even more, and for my luck Astru (as a side-info, totally unrelated to the band, astru in Romanian means star) offers the same amount of experimental harmonies in its compositions. 
Opening the split is the one man band Astru with its strange, dissonant, close to sisnister mix between Black Metal and Noise Ambient, with opening to any other influence that might find its way in. It's definitely not an easily digestible music but it's interesting enough to make keep your interest high in what's about to come next; cold, razor-sharp guitars meet synthetic, impersonal drumming, atmospheric keyboards/synths and a creepy mix of whispers and hoarse Black Metal type vocals. 
Nagaarum offer 2 tracks, each of them 10 minutes long, and compared to Astru's side it offers a more solid, oppressive production, hence a more sinister atmosphere. I still think Nagaarum's music could be envisioned as a schyzophrenic patient escaped from the mental hospital, roaming free through the city and of course, having multiple hallucinations, visions, nightmares... it's a sad, but at the same time deeply disturbing and touching music, or at least it is to me. If you haven't met Nagaarum's music before, check it out, but be warned, you can love it just as much as you can hate it to bits, I don't think there's a middle option here.
Reviewed by Adrian
Rating: 6/10   8/10

Contact:
astru.bandcamp.com
nagaarum.bandcamp.com
ngcprod.blogspot.hu