Draugveil
"Cruel World of Dreams and Fears" (2025)

Draugveil’s "Cruel World of Dreams and Fears" is a bleak soliloquy set to music, a solitary descent into inner decay, painted in shades of frost, sorrow, and defiance.

The album opens with “Knight Without a Name,” a track that feels like waking from a distant nightmare: the guitars are drenched in lo-fi fuzz, but the melody is unmistakably mournful, looping in a way that evokes forgotten memories clawing their way to the surface. Vocals pierce through like desperate echoes in a snowbound chapel, anguished, distant, and raw.

Throughout the album, Draugveil achieves something rare: a marriage of second-wave black metal's frostbitten aesthetic with moments of tender, haunting atmosphere. “My Sword Points to the Past,” an instrumental interlude, is both delicate and grim, as if time itself has stopped, letting the weight of memory settle like ash on the ground.

Standout track “Vortex” balances chaos with structure. The tremolo riffs rage forward like wind in a blizzard, but beneath the surface lies a precise melodic current that keeps the storm tethered. It’s here the artist’s songwriting prowess really shines, restraint wrapped in fury.

But the true gem comes last. “When Silence Became My Kingdom” is an unexpected pivot into dungeon synth territory, not as an afterthought, but as a spiritual finale. Imagine a medieval ruin long abandoned, now echoing only with wind and sorrow. The track is a meditative closure, allowing the listener to sit with the grief rather than run from it.

This album isn’t concerned with innovation, and that’s its strength. It leans into the emotional DNA of black metal: loneliness, regret, defiance, dreams decayed by time. The production is raw, yet not careless. Every sonic choice, from the buried percussion to the wind-like guitars, serves the atmosphere.

It often echoes acts like Burzum, Drowning the Light, and even I Shalt Become, but there's a personal stamp here, a sort of fragile honesty beneath the corpsepaint.

Highlights:

* Atmosphere: Dense, depressive, deeply immersive.

* Composition: Simple but emotionally intelligent, with strong motifs and layered textures.

* Cohesion: Tracks flow like chapters in a dying man’s journal.

Weak Points:

* Casual listeners may find the lo-fi mix too murky.

* Some melodies verge on repetition — though fans of hypnotic black metal will likely see this as meditative rather than dull.

"Cruel World of Dreams and Fears" doesn’t reinvent the genre, but it doesn’t need to. Instead, it taps into the core of what atmospheric black metal should be: a mirror held to one’s most vulnerable fears and quietest griefs. A must-listen for those who seek emotion before perfection.