Looking at some recent folk-metal releases, Swiss folk-metal band Eluveitie released Everything Remains as It Never Was (Nuclear Blast) earlier this year. This is the band’s fourth full-length and third album in three years after signing with Nuclear Blast in 2008.

I haven’t listened to enough folk/pagan metal bands to have a true sense for the genre but I’ve been left with the impression that a number of band in this space have a renaissance/operatic sounds that falls somewhere between Blackmore’s Night and recent releases on Cruz Del Sur. Eluveitie’s last disc Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion (2009) fell directly in line with this assumption as it was predominately an acoustic affair with vocals by hurdy gurdy player Anna Murphy.

Everything Remain as It Never Was breaks from this premise and has some real metal teeth. Chrigel Glanzmann handles most of the vocals with a death metal growl and there is some vocal interplay with clean vocalist Anna Murphy. Murphy contributes lead vocals on “Quoth The Raven” and, on this track, she adds a death metal growl to her range. There is a nice interplay between the vocals and the music which is complemented by Colin Richardson’s crisp production work.

The disc starts and ends with the spoken word intro and outro from Dannii Young, which sets the stage for the Celtic themes of this disc. Musically, the melodic metal blast beats are balanced by traditional folk instruments like hurdy gurdy, flute, bagpipes and whistles. In addition to the spoken word tracks, there are two acoustic instrumentals “Tsara” and “Setion”.

The first video from the new disc was for the song “Thousandfold”:



Eluveitie just finished a tour with fellow Swedes Amon Amarth and here is a video from the show at Irving Plaza:



Links:
Eluveitie