Generally, I try to avoid "pop culture." I hate the ever-loving crap out of reality television. I don’t peruse the tabloids while waiting in line at the grocery store to buy Metamucil behind some 95-year old Cat Empress who feels the need to haggle over a 5-cent discrepancy in the price of her small-African-nation-sized bag of dry kitten chow. At the workplace water cooler, I generally interrupt discussions revolving around last night’s groundbreaking episode of Lame Sitcom #41 with questions concerning my chaffed nether regions or my all-consuming fear that every newly noticed nick, scrape and lesion on my body is actually a malignant tumor. Sometimes, however, fate conspires against me and I’m forced to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood-spawned monstrosity that so many choose to fill their vacant, meaningless lives with. Such glimpses are soon followed by urgent pleas to Odin/Yahweh/Mr. Peanut to immediately decimate* the state of California with whatever tools for divine vengeance happen to be on hand (lightning/locusts/salt and preservatives). Perhaps I am being a bit too hasty, which occurs to me when I consider the fact that the Golden State offers some of the darkest, most despondent-sounding metal in the world these days. Somehow, the state that has graced us with the horse-faced demon whorespawn that is Paris Hilton has also provided us with the likes of Xasthur, Leviathan and Draugar.

Like his Caligrim brethren, Draugar is a (insert sarcastic gasp here) one-man, noisy, grim, abrasive, harsh, non-friendly to baby seals and the elderly, black metal project. Also, like the previously mentioned one-man black metal supergroups, Draugar‘s inspiration supposedly owes more to personal accounts of depression and isolation than lame Norsecore, mall-ready "Satanic" rebellion. Perhaps it’s this motivating factor that makes these projects reminiscent, in the best possible way, of early Burzum releases. To be clear, Draugar‘s music itself sounds very little like the first three Burzum full-lengths, but the droning, oppressive/depressive atmosphere is similar. Weathering The Curse expertly combines several layers of instrumentation per song to create lengthy, droning, yet very abrasive and engaging tapestries of sonic-something or other (:::consults thesaurus::: decides upon "sonic anguish":::) Adding to the effectiveness of the eight songs that comprise this release, there are occasional clean guitar tracks thrown in that only add to its unsettling nature. The caustic distortion-laden shrieks that serve as Draugar‘s vocals further enhance the hopeless mood set by the instrumentals. Despite the droning nature of the music, the vocal performance manages to remain interesting throughout the entire CD. Not once did I find myself thinking that any particular track was dragging on, which is a danger at times with this specific type of black metal.

This disc is most definitely a worthy addition to the suicide cult that is one-man-Caligrim black metal. I would suggest that everyone who appreciates the genre to give this a few serious listens, preferably in its entirety and most safely in a shoelace-free environment. Thanks to the likes of Draugar, I’m going to hope that California is spared from whatever invisible man in the sky you happen to believe in… for now at least.

* Five bonus points for using a Suffoword in a metal review.

Review byPantala Naga Pampa