ELUVEITIE - Spirit (2006)

I won’t be doing the Vên EP since my streaming services don’t have it in its original form.  I don’t know where the hell a re-recorded version of the already re-recorded “Uis Elveti” will fit in my attempts to get a chronological sense of this band’s evolution.  Instead, I start the project with Eluveitie already having achieved its near final form, as a nine piece of non-session musicians.  In addition to Chigrel, guitarists Ivo Henzi and Siméon Koch are both on board by this point, as are drummer Merlin Sutter and fiddler Meri Tadić.  So, here’s their true debut, Spirit.

 

Track One:  “Spirit”

 I’m only going to know what the English songs are about, to be clear. 

This is the ever-popular “intro track,” just a few simple musical ideas repeated over and over.  But the chanted vocals are nice, especially paired with what sounds like a hurdy-gurdy despite no gurdyist being credited.  Makes you want to ride a horse in dramatic slow motion.

 

Track Two:  “Uis Elveti”

Accordion and.. uh, some other folk instrument of some sort smoothly transition us from the opening track and then – BOOM.  There’s that glorious moment at 0:29 when we get the first real “lead” vocal of the record from Chigrel – a full-on primal “this is the first vocal of the record” sort of shout - and the guitar drops a few seconds later.  Love it.  I’ve heard some mixed opinions about his vocals, but I think he’s a compelling vocalist, with a sort of bellowing growl that lets him command a song and give it a discernable melody even for one who’s not a huge one for death metal.  But… here’s where we first see how badly the vocals are buried in this mix, and I do not approve of that.  This is back to me be a vocal melody guy – I want my singer to carry the song, and it’s hard when the people putting together the record inexplicably refuse to let the main composer be front and center.  I wonder if Chigrel had any reluctance in the early days to be the face of a band that combines so many elements? 

 

Anyway, another song that’s not in English.  I like it as an extension of the first track; the main “hook” comes from the group chanted vocals, and it’s also just a banger that makes me want to ride into battle.  This is the first taste of the neat pairing of folk and metal here, as the accordion and the guitar sort of both elevate without going nuts so it’s hard to tell who has the “solo.”  For reasons that I’m not clear on, this is one of many tracks on the record with water in the background, which leads us into…

 

Track Three:  “Your Gaulish War”

This is both an exciting sound in a general sense yet Eluveitie being nondescript.  And I say that despite the heavy use of Chigrel’s mandolin for the first time, a pre-chorus riff built around soaring woodwinds for the first time (soon to become a staple), and English lyrics for the first time.  Not that the production and the composition do much for the lyrical side of things.  The words are completely unintelligible even with the words in front of me, and I don’t remember it being this way on Origins.  I would have had no clue that the narrator is contemptuous of the warmongering ”you” in this song, not spurring “you” on to battle at all, because the sound doesn’t really match that.  The fact that even with the lyrics in front of me I can’t figure out where he is isn’t a good thing for me.  It doesn’t help that other than the great flute bit, the instrumentation – especially the “metal” half of this folk metal thing – is really nondescript here.  This is a track that shrinks in my estimation the more I pay attention to it.

 

Track Four:  “Of Fire, Wind, And Wisdom”

Man, at first it seems like we’ve hit paydirt here.  The first twenty seconds or so are CHAOS, in a good way, with the bass strings (neither cello nor bass violin are listed in the credits, but it sounds like one of those) taking spotlight for the first time, except that it’s fighting with the guitars and Merlin’s drums for prominence.  Oh, and muttering vocals.  Unfortunately this is a barely three minute song that has only half as long’s worth of musical ideas, content to get by on vibes.  At least it’s a pretty good vibe, especially for a song that seems to be about seeking wisdom through nature and touch with the ancient or some such thing. 

 

Of note:  this is one of two songs in which guitarist Ivo Henzi is credited as a songwriter (otherwise it’s all Chigrel, all the time).  And this is I believe the first lyrical reference to either an “endless knot” and the first use of the word “spirit.”  Obviously both will come back.  Fittingly, wind, rather than lapping water, is the soundscape that takes us into the next one…

Track Five:  “Aidû”

Even more so than the intro, this is a pure folk song tucked into this metal record.  Lots of background noise (kind of oppressively so), no rock instruments, and although female voices have been part of the mix here and there on other tracks, this one is entirely female fronted (the credited female vocalists on this record would all not be long for the band).  Eluveitie is kind of its own thing, but for someone who listens to mostly metal, a non-metal track at this point on the record that sounds different than everything before screams “interlude.”  I don’t know if the average listener would have felt right away how serious this band is about getting folk all over your metal.  Despite the above, which I do think of as a bit of a critique – it feels kind of inessential – it really is hard to argue with that captivating flute riff, which I assume can be credited to Sevan Kirder (again, I’m just basing this on the album credits here).

 

Track Six:  “The Song Of Life”

More wind leads us into the most metal opening so far.  And then the big drop comes from a “dancing” wind instrument part, not the same as the one from “Aidû” but somehow feeling similar.  I know I’m trying to impose a narrative on a completed record from a near-established band here, but I feel like at this point in the record Eluveitie have found themselves.  They’ve settled into a groove of alternating between Chigrel and the flute and/or bagpipes, and it just sounds awesome.  We are committing to both the Celtic elements and the metal elements, and after sounding like it was going to be a war record, it’s turning into a nature record.  I can feel the songs starting to blur a bit as we establish a formula, but it’s a good formula.  This is good stuff.

 

Track Seven:  “Tegernakô”

Violin taking lead this time with a dancing figure along with plenty of winds and growls.  Okay, so it’s mostly the same elements we’ve been seeing all record.  This time, though, they come together into a track that’s more than the sum of its parts.  I’m sure I’m going to soon run out of ways to say that a song makes me want to bang my head and dance in a ritualistic circle at the same time, but that’s what you get when your band is totally serious about being both a melodic death metal band and a folk band.  This one actually has a sing-out-loud chorus.  C’mon:  “TRUE AND PLAIN!  FREEEEEDOM!”  I would argue that this is a song that makes one (or at least me) feel things, at least when in the right mood, and you can’t fake that kind of emotional reaction. 

 

I haven’t been specifically noticing Merlin’s drumming much, but this song (even before the breakdown which is full of percussion) highlights how cleverly the drums are placed to provide just the right amount of kick on the transition between phrases.  Even the pseudo-spoken-word part culminates in a brough’d “freedom can’t be bought,” so, all good.  This song is a bit longer than it needs to be, but with other songs like “The Song Of Life” feeling a bit too short, can you blame the band for making their first big lap a victory one (victory dance?  Wait, that’s later).

 

I was not able to find a specific translation or mythological significance for the name/word “Tegernakô.”

 

Track Eight:  “Siraxta”

Almost an extended fake-out.  This 5+ minute track seems forever like it’s going to be another pure interlude track that’s all folk with female non-English vocals.  Even when the guitar comes in, it meshes so well with the other kind of strings that it doesn’t change the tone of the song much.  And even when Chigrel starts singing – the only time this record uses the ever popular trick of making the growls a backdrop for ethereal clean vocals – the original vocal melody continues, with the unclean vocals remaining firmly in the background, so it’s still the same song with the same tone.  And then, psych!  Here come Merlin and Chigrel going nuts!  Rrrrrah!  I like “Siraxta” overall, but am definitely running up against my limited ability to really connect to songs with the vocals in other languages. 

 

Track Nine:  “The Dance Of Victory”

Spirit is not an especially long record, but like Origins, there’s a lot of intensity going on, and it feels like a lot after a while.  In the narrative of reviewing this record, I’m fading here.  (And that’s even with a few days’ gap between writing about tracks 1-7 and 8 onward.)  Take in point, this song.  It sounds a lot like a mid-tempo version of all the other songs.  Lively woodwinds leading the way with a motif that’s a lot like the ones from “Your Gaulish War,” “The Song Of Life,” etc. while guitars crunch along, check, Chigrel growling a bunch of stuff whilst buried in the mix, without much of a melody, check.  This one really leaves very little impression as its own song rather than as one of many on the record that have this basic sound.  Um… I guess the drumming is especially solid here?  I like the mid-song string breakdown and the way it leads into an especially frenetic wind solo?  That’s all I’ve got.

 

Not that any of the lyrics are even remotely intelligible on this track, but they’re especially pretentious here.  And the chorus actually includes the phrase “Hark!  At the ruins of the vile I will dance in victory.”

 

Track Ten:  “The Endless Knot”

Longest track!  (And the second of two with Ivo credited as cowriter.)  Will it be a traditional metal epic?  Well, the guitars seem to be trying to do one thing but the whispering and even more insistent orchestration forces the song into a slower groove.  From there, “The Endless Knot” actually is a bit of a tour de force.  It makes rare use of group clean vocals (both male and female), and the interplay of the harsh and clean singing really sell the “trod on your endless paths” part.  I don’t totally understand this song, and that’s part of what I enjoy about it, but I’m getting desperation turned to resignation turned to the solace one can take in the fact that something is endless and eternal.  The song includes a bridge at around 4:30 that has a calm chanting part – along with one last bit of lapping water! – that devolves into kind of a desperate wail/scream before giving us another chorus of the song.  More than any other song on the record, this one makes me want to go back and study it.   “The Endless Knot” gives that sense that it deserves your attention, you know?  I’m not clear on who the “you” is guiding the speaker, or whether there’s meant to be a close lyrical connection with “Of Fire, Wind, And Wisdom,” but maybe if I listen to Spirit a bunch more times it’ll all come together perfectly?

 

Track Eleven:  “AnDro”

We end with an instrumental.  I thought originally that the intro pattern being played by the (bagpipes?  Pan-flute?) had to be something we’d heard before on another song, but now I don’t think so… admittedly, I’m bad at recognizing motifs.  Maybe this record and this band just have a specific sound.  This is a metal song that features bagpipes way more prominently than you’d expect from metallers not from Scotland, but it’s very much in line with the rest of the record. This sounds like Eluveitie. 

 

Additional comments

That concludes my fumbling attempt to dissect this piece of art track by track.  I’ve been throwing a lot of praise on individual tracks, and on the whole I’ve enjoyed my time with Spirit.  But with all the praise, however measured, I think it’s worth making another point.   Does this seem like something written on first listen: “this track has a flute, and this track is in a deeper register, and…”  Well, it’s not.  The bulk of this text was written when after a few listens I realized that unless I sat in front of the computer with the lyrics in front of me and took notes track by track, I was never going to remember which one was which.  On relistens “Tegernakô” and “Uis Elveti” still rock, but I have to be focused to really love them, whereas the lesser tracks don’t seem too much “lesser” than the others because they’re really just more of the same.  As a whole Spirit is a singular piece of work produced by a clearly talented group of musicians, and I enjoy it well enough, but really understanding it or appreciating its component parts is taking effort.  I would consider giving up on ever getting more out of this record than I have so far were I not doing this project.  And that just means that for my personal tastes, this is the sort of thing I like but don’t love.

 

Unsurprisingly to anyone who’s read more than a few words of my comments on music, but the thing that would really push this version of Eluveitie over the top to candidacy as a Benjamin favorite would be a more distinct vocal identity.  It is all about the singing in the end.  It’s not just this record sticking mostly with death-metal vox and chanting.  It’s also the way it consistently buries Chigrel in the mix, crippling one of its most potent weapons.  Maybe they figured he was the least unique element of their sound?  But he’s their visionary, and he should be front and center.   Pretending for a second that I don’t already have a general sense of what’s coming for this band, I’d suggest one of two things happened on future releases.  Either Chigrel needs to add more “melodic” to the “melodic death metal” and sing a little more – whilst also growling a lot – and be the focus of the songs.  Or they need to recruit a frontman and lean heavily into the clean vocals, with Chigrel being more of the backup singer.  Maybe an Anna Murphy type would fit here, haha.  If the band that made Spirit did some combination of those two things, they’d become, well, the band that made Origins.

 

I feel like without discovering Eluveitie, I could have gone through life without appreciating that “Celtic heritage” isn’t something that applies exclusively to the British Isles. 

 

 

- Favorite track:  "Tegernakô"

- Runner up:  "The Endless Knot”

- Least favorite track:  "The Dance Of Victory”

- Rating:  3.5/5

 

On to Slania whenever I get around to it!