Eluveitie - Everything Remains As It Never Was (2010)

After their acoustic album “Evocation I - The Arcane Dominion” we finally get a new ‘metallic’ release and it’s a great one. Eluveitie has managed to craft its sound to a near perfect fusion of Folk music with Melodic Metal.

While playing music in this style is not original by any means. Eluveitie does it with such grace that blows the competition out of the water. The eight piece Swiss band has released their most mature album to date and it can only get better from here.

Featuring 13 tracks and featuring a couple of music only tracks, the album is very diverse and does not get too repetitive like the band’s previous releases “Spirit” and “Slania”. The fiddle, which is an instrument we love in music, can get a bit tedious especially after 8 tracks of non-stop fiddle. But Eluveitie does a great job at changing stuff around and adding musical interludes after a few songs to change the pace of the album.

For us the best songs of the album are the album title track and “Thousandfold”, making an impressive opening for this album since they are the first 2 tracks after the intro song.
As far as the elements in the band’s music are concerned, they have a very rich palette of traditional Celtic instruments and they are all used in perfect unison to create a very powerful sound. Using whistles, bagpipes, mandolin, and the awesomely named Hurdy Gurdy, the band has enough different sounds to have you listening to the album over an over in order to identify all of them.

The vocals are the traditional Eluveitie harsh screams and sometimes more guttural sounds. They also have some very nicely placed choir sections, and some female vocals. I would have loved for this band to explore more on different combination of vocals in order to make them more versatile on this area (like in the song “Quoth The Raven”).

Overall we have a brilliant album that features over 45 minutes of greatly composed music. Eluveitie will continue to remained as and the undeniable king of their genre. So if you like Folk Metal, or even Pagan and Viking Metal give “Everything Remains As It Never Was” a try and you will not be disappointed. If you are already a fan of the band, you will love this album and it will surely be your favorite from the band’s discography.

Release: March 9th, 2010

Country: Switzerland