Eluveitie - Ànv (2025)

Six years have passed since the last release from the Swiss masters of Celtic/Folk Metal Eluveitie and they sure make up for it with the awesome “Ànv”. Filled with their highly crafty and melancholic brand of Metal, this release delivers twelve tracks and over 40 minutes of the band’s highly refined music with a few extra more modern influences thrown into the mix.

Starting with a mood setting atmospheric intro, the band quickly gets to business with the explosive “Taranoías”, a fierce track that sets a high-octane vibe from the get go. The hard-hitting “The Prodigal Ones” keeps the momentum going as Chrigel Glanzmann and Fabienne Erni deliver engaging alternating “Beauty and the Beast”-styled vocals, while the album title track changes the pace with an eerie ethereal piece that showcases Fabienne’s range.

Masterfully alternating between heavy and fierce pieces like “Premonition” and “Awen”, and more atmospheric and folky interludes, we get the quintessential Eluveitie combination of string and wind instruments to create very engaging and epic headbanging passages. With a very cinematic and epic nature, tracks like “The Harvest” keep things heavy while exploiting the full-range of the band’s instrumentation. These songs create very cohesive and explosive tracks that make the band’s signature sound.

On the power-ballad side, “All is One” is one of our favorite tracks of this release, showcasing the band’s more melancholic and melodic folky side. Overall, “Ànv” showcases a band that has polished their style over the years and has perfectly incorporated a wide variety of instruments into their Metal core. As one of the band’s best releases, this album further elevates their sound to make them stand out in a very crowded genre.

Label: Nuclear Blast Records

Release: April 25th, 2025

Genre: Folk/Melodic Metal

Country: Switzerland