In my case, it didn't take long to start suspecting that what ailed _The Grimalkin_ might also be _The Minstrel's Curse_'s curse, so to speak. The music, with all of its traditional and progressive heavy metal along with other more eclectic elements, simply fails to convey much to the listener. Much as Noekk may string together musically irreproachable passages, they never mean more than they strictly should as a sequence, never transcend into something that really affects and captures the listener. This is my main problem with _The Minstrel's Curse_, as it was with _The Grimalkin_; it may not have been made to sound consistent and steady to begin with, but to me it fails to come across as more than a collation of passages that as an album fail to overcome a feeling of disaffection.