Weathering the Curse

As a musician and, first of all, a passionate listener to all genres of metal since 1995, I can clearly remember how the scene started to inflate in late '90s, and then, in the early 2000's, the situation was hugely out of control! A lot of bands and project were so busy in emulate the early '90 black metal formula, specifically the northern European set of styles! Norwegian and Swedish schools were prominently strong among every other geographical scene, ad United States made no difference. The post-Grishnackh black metal style was heavily followed by a large number of bands or one-man projects, such as Xasthur, Leviathan and, of course, the object of this review: Draugar! I'm not really a supporter of the depressive black metal sub-sub-genre, as in my opinion it is just a (mis)interpretation of the early Grishnackh, or Forgotten Woods unique approach to black metal. It is evident, for me, that the doleful sonic atmosphere of those Norwegian acts deeply inspired a whole group of bands, even if there was no deflected mood references in the lyrical themes of the first originators.

The extension of that kind of sound is widely practiced by Draugar: very lo-fi, quite disturbing production quality, filled with reverb and quasi-white noise wall of sound, with minimal, subtle melodic phrasing, leading to long lasting compositions, based on reiterations of few simple riffs. The screaming vocals, one of the raspiest on their kind, perfectly merges in the whole atmosphere, creating a sense of dead end with no possible escape! This is not a masterpiece, I would like to stress, but a really interesting release: there are no ambient or dungeon synth interludes or tracks: black metal itself becomes something atmospheric and abstract. Truly an unusual artistic achievement, as we all intend metal as a strongly emphasized rhythmic genre. We have blast-beats, for sure, but the majority of time fades into a quasi-anti-rhythmic, doomish stream of noise, with a few notes as melodic reference.

A very long release, hard to listen to its entirety in one single time: a hour long journey within the deepest realms of sorrow and affliction! Better than the aforementioned Xasthur or Leviathan, even if those projects released a wide number of records while Draugar stops itself after this full-length, counting only two products in the row. A listening experience, not easy or pleasant at all, but I think that this was the main goal of the whole project: task completed successfully!

I've been listening to this album for at least ten years, and every time I put it on, I can still listen to the whole thing from start to finish and be constantly entertained.

This kind of sounds like some of the early USBM all-stars (Leviathan and Crebain), but there are more jangly guitars than Leviathan and a less abrasive drum program sound than Crebain. The processed vocal style of the two previously mentioned bands are the same, though. Also in this mix is some keyboard usage most similar to early Xasthur, but when you put it all together, you get something different that none of Draugar's then-colleagues had come up with. It's faster than Xasthur, more melodic than Crebain, but more atmosphere driven than Leviathan.

It's a really long album, but I welcome that because this music is good for having on when you're doing something like deskwork for an hour. The production is pretty raw, but the buzzing guitars and vocals make a perfect white-noise effect. Throw in some really good riff heavy moments and you have what I think is a really good listen.

In my opinion I can't see why fans of noisier BM wouldn't like this, and I think the fact that it's still so enjoyable almost 15 years after it came out is worth mentioning. The first track is really memorable, but the whole album sounds pretty similar, so it's really meant to be enjoyed as a whole instead of putting on for one or two songs.

One fact will be immediately obvious (to the point of being impossible to ignore) to anyone who listens to "Weathering the Curse", on any soundsystem - Draugar's second album is marred by the most irritating, harsh and unlistenable production I've ever come across. The entire album is coated in cheap, obnoxious mid-high frequency crackle. What's more, every time the vocalist makes an utterance, the entire band is buried in a distorted, watery cascade of delay and reverb. It's louder than everything else in the mix, but I can't even really tell what the vocalist's voice sounds like. He might as well have been recorded on a built in laptop microphone. The drums have only a feeble presence. The keyboards, when they appear, genuinely sound effectively liquid and haunting, doubling the progressions of the guitar... they belong on a better produced album. The guitars don't sound that bad, but the crackling sound of everything else is so incredibly distracting that listening to the entire album, or even more than one song at once, is impossible.

I must stress that there is a difference because the rough, cold, distant or ambient production prefered in a lot of black metal and the sound of this disk, which is digital, cheap and harsh on the ears, and doesn't remind me in the slightest of a dungeon or cave. Moribund Records has certainly released records in which a thin, spacious sound is used to great effect. "Weathering the Curse" is actually the antithesis of this - the feeling in the music is obscured by the technical errors.

I say this because I believe there was sincerity in the members of the group when they wrote this music. Draugar's droning riffs and song structures could have been at least somewhat immersive and effectively melancholy with better production, something that becomes more obvious as I manage to struggle through the first four tracks of the album. Their songs exhibit a lot more thrash sensibility and coherency than labelmates Azrael. "Wage A Finale Battle" actually has some drama and buildup, though it remains within the context of a well established black metal sound. Unfortunately for the band, it ultimately doesn't matter - I can't listen to this album, and therefore must give it the lowest rating possible. I might check out their first record, though, which should at least sound different.

How, exactly, when there are numerous brilliant unsigned bands out there, does fucking DRAUGAR manage to get a record deal with Moribund. There's precisely three possible reasons that I can think of for this match made in hell:

1. Someone owes someone a favor, or perhaps Hildolf is a friend of some Moribund executive.

2. Moribund signed Draugar before actually hearing this album and their reaction was akin to Peaceville's upon hearing 'Transilvanian Hunger'.

3. They HONESTLY THINK that this is good music.

Now, wishful thinking makes me believe that it's one of the first two options, but cognitively I know better and it's probably the third, which really begs the question of what the fuck Moribund are thinking because god damn is this terrible. This isn't just bad professional music, it's awful and fairly incompetent music, which makes it even more mind-boggling that this is being released on a fairly major label. What the hell? Nothing JUSTIFIES this album's release. It's completely awful from top to bottom and no amount of hand-wringing apologetics can make it any better.

The production is awful, and not good awful, just awful awful. It's not just thin, it's cheap and perpetually crackling like it was recorded on cheap, old tape, which does something to add to the atmosphere (which is about all this release has that's decent). That atmosphere; sort of vaguely warlike, not so much 'in the battle' as 'trumpets on the horizon'. Occasionally the music will work well to conjure some interesting imagery of vast grey landscapes and hordes of warriors approaching each other. So in that respect, this release is a success.

What's amazing is that a decent atmosphere is occasionally maintained when the ingredients themselves are such utter fucking shit. A constant wash of Xasthuresque guitar noise just sort of lays there, very static even in the most intense and tremolo riffed moments. Some of the slower riffs have their charms, but the faster ones are utterly incoherent strings of notes that have no relation to one another. The riffs are long and composed of many notes, but this isn't due to elaborate melodies, it's due to Hildolf desperately trying to find some fucking resolution for his moronically composed melodic (non)sensibilities. The whole album feels like this in away, as though the guy behind this music has a BASIC idea of what the songs were like but was suddenly surprised by a tape recorded starting and said 'well shit, I guess I'll have to improvise!' and then saying 'well that was good enough, I don't think I need to revise that!' Here's the magical ending to this story, YES YOU DO HAVE TO REVISE IT.

Drums are a complete loss, maybe they're programmed, maybe they're played, either way they're inaudible. Occasionally a burst of medieval synths will intrude on the bland 'depressive' black metal, and they manage to shine for the brief glimmers that they appear. But maybe the lamest part of this whole concoction are the pitiful, overly distorted vocals designed to mask someone with less than zero skill at projecting any emotion with his voice, and so thinking that adding artificial abrasiveness will somehow make up for it. It doesn't.

Look, this just sucks and when people point a finger at USBM's depressive sect as being awful, THIS is the sort of band they're pointing to. This has no redeeming qualities. If all the South Americans were right and there was such a genre as 'trash metal', this would be its frontrunner.

In the strangeness of day to day life we rarely encounter music which can in some way make you think a little different, or wonder for the sanity of the musical creations which you listen to. But then come bands like Woods of Infinity or in this case California's Draugar and you really have to wonder, what drugs are they on?

Draugar takes strange repetitive guitar riffs, which often have a bizzare folky tone, he then plays then in a sick fashion, as if close to death in some way, combining this with repetitive simple drum programming and two of the most distinctive aspects of this, the odd keyboards which don't seem to fit every totally and the distorted vocals which have a bizzare Skinny Puppy type edge to them.

So as one listens to this it is as if slowly everything disembles, the guitars go off on their tangent, while the keyboards play what they desire too, and the only thing holding it to some semblance of sanity is the drum programming. But somehow above all this, this recording does not fall into self parody or silliness, but instead creates a dark, evil, autumnal listen that seems to refference to the Black Legions in its intense desire to spread the feeling of death's slow decaying touch upon the soul inside of your body.

So in essence this is not "suicidal BM" I don't think there is a single song about suicide, but it is anti-human, anti-life black metal, that desires to spread sickness and death throughout the masses of humanity, and even if it is only a aural depiction, it still contains much power.

I'd suggest this to people who are fans of dark disturbed black metal like Xasthur, Woods of Infinity, Leviathan, Vrolok and any of the Black Legions. Your death calls, and Draugar is here to make you feel it.