This is only a sanctioned fan page. I am not Hildolf ; however, I have been given permission to keep and maintain this page by Hildolf himself.
(10 Oct. '07: Due to numerous requests for Weathering the Curse material I must announce that every track on that particular album exceeds the 10MB limit MySpace allows for each song. I currently lack the means to either compact or edit the length of these tracks; hence "Weathering" tracks will not appear here for the time being.)
Contact info—send a SASE to:
177 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA
94103
"I'll sign whatever and post it back." —Hildolf
Draugar (ghosts): A draug (plural draugar), draugr or draugen (Norwegian meaning "the draug") is a corporeal undead from Norse mythology. Draugar were believed to live in the graves of dead Vikings, being the body of the dead.
The original Nordic meaning of the word Draugr (pronounced "droo-GORE") is "ghost".
Theodor Severin Kittelsen's "Draugen" (The Sea Ghost)
*"Haunting and atmospheric, brutal and buzzing, blighted and black. Finger-picked acoustic guitars explode into roaring, soul-shearing riffs, pounding drums demarcate hazy blackened sound-scapes of misanthropic brutality and gorgeously melodic impurity, damaged and demented arrangements underpin hellish profane howls of utter anguish. Yeah, black metal at its best with nary a glacier or fjord in sight. Yet, as Burzumically brutal as it all is, you could be listening to this and suddenly forget and mistakenly think you've got some fucked up experiment in lo-fi ambient drone psychedelia on your stereo instead. Keyboards warble WAY above the mix, drums and vocals and guitars are whipped into Merzbow-ic blasts of white noise, blast beats are obliterated into gentle expanses of delicate acoustic guitars and droning ambient hum, the whole thing a gorgeously perplexing blast of bizarre blackened sonic experimentation. Much like the infamous Benighted Leams confused and astounded us once upon a time with its outsider genius; Draugar transcends black metal musical norms, making truly abnormal, artistic sound with unknown boundaries. Like Leviathan and our other favorite California black metal act Xasthur, it's the one-man-alone, far from the 'scene' aspect that seems to foster creativity beyond that of many ordinary black metal bands."
*"The black ice continues to spread, a grim black metal glacier slowly enveloping all with ears to hear. The West Coast black metal contingent's influence grows steadily, until one day hell walks the earth. Sorry, getting carried away. If the above scene had some sort of hierarchy, Leviathan would undoubtedly be the king. Xasthur would be a prince, or perhaps another king vying for supreme power. Crebain would be a knight, sent to slay all who shall dare oppose, and then Draugar, well Draugar would be the king’s ex-vizier, locked in a dark dank dungeon, insane and murderous and demented, from years of no light, eating bugs, lack of sleep, and staring endlessly into blackness. Draugar is definitely the black sheep of this already black family, imbuing his home recorded evil, with the grim buzz of classic black metal, but with a healthy dollop of damaged brilliance a la Benighted Leams, Lurker of Chalice, or Striborg. Buzzy and black, droning and depressive, Draugar more than holds his own amidst the blackened elite, but somehow, everything he touches turns to what-the-fuck? Gentle clean arpeggiated clean guitar melodies are way up in the mix, layered atop a sluggish stream of indistinct guitar fuzz and Whitehouse-ish vocals. Sounding a little like somebody taped Darkthrone over a Slint record on an old C90 that had been in their back pocket for a month. Loping mid-tempo buzz over buried angelic choruses, like Morricone's The Mission performed by Graveland. Occasional ambient breaks, where guitar melodies wander aimlessly across barren sound-scapes of distant rumble and creepy shimmer. Sometimes the riff seems to just splinter apart and what was moments earlier a galloping black metal juggernaut, has become a seasick drone, constructed from fuzzy almost melodies and vocals so distorted and so affected, they sound like bursts of radio static."
*Reviews were randomly culled from the Internet, author is unknown.
Additional reference material:
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An interview with Hildolf on DeadTide.com
Draugar's Encyclopaedia Metallum page
Discography:
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Realizations Obscured - Demo, 2002
Draugar - Demo, 2002
Silence And Suffering - Demo, 2003
From Which Hatred Grows - Full-length, 2003
Weathering the Curse - Full-length, 2004
(Forthcoming album) - Full-length, 2009/2010