The 2003 debut of existentialist, hallucinatory black metal from San Fran BM visionary Hildolf, forging ferociously damaged black metal under the name Draugar. From Which Hatred Grows is a fiercely frantic blast of Burzumic hatred that finds it's strength in pure bestial distortion, the riffs swarming out of a blown practice amp and flocking like winged razorblades over Draugar's stumbling keyboard melodies and the blasting drum machine buried so deeply in the murk that it's an afterthought. Fingerpicked acoustic guitars float to the surface and Hildolf's distorted shriek comes close to being another layer of white noise over everything, but that's where Draugar's genius lies - instead of going for broke and just jamming all of the songs through a concrete mixer and churning out an incomprehensible blurr of black shred (which, of course, can be a good thing), Hildolf leaves just enough definition on the music to make the songs sound like your hearing a supremely epic symphonic black metal band being transmitted to you though a transistor radio dialed in to hell, ripping through a Merzbow style wall of fzzzzz. Brutal and harsh, a Burzumic buzzblast encrusted in blood and filth, and yet possessed of haunting (un)heavenly melodies and sublime droning beauty. Draugar is unquestionably as fucked and paradigm shifting as Hildolf's Cali USBM peers in Weakling, Leviathan, Crebain, Xasthur, but the approach is caustically psychedelic. Recommended.