ELUVEITIE - Origins (2014)

So here we are.  The quick (by my standards) turnaround since my last Eluveitie post comes because I didn't need to get to know all these songs from the beginning (and because I've been blogging like a madman these past couple weeks... this rate of posting won't last, but I'm running with it for now).  As noted multiple times Origins is the record that got me fascinated with Eluveitie, and now I get to find out in context of their career if it holds up.

Personnel notes at a changing time in the band's career:  Here Ivo is specifically credited for "rhythm guitar" whereas newbie Rafael Salzmann is "lead guitar."  Nicole Ansberger joins as the principal fiddler/cellist (with some guest musicians providing additional strings), a musical partner to Chigrel and apparently soon to be a life partner with a complicated and messy personal relationship that I don't know nearly enough about to intelligently speak about; at this point she has no songwriting credits and I don't know how well integrated she is into the ensemble.  Songwriting wise, Ivo is all over the place with the writing credits this time, with Anna contributing here and there.  And vocals wise, Anna and Chigrel are making an incredible team (spoilers?).  Going with the usual track by track...

Track One:  "Origins (intro)"

Meh.  It's a wind blowing intro with a ponderous spoken intro by Andrew Norton, the broughe'd guy who did the ponderous spoken word stuff on Helvetios too.  This record is more about mythology than war, and I guess now that's made explicit.  A hurdy melody that we may well have heard before, or not, I don't even know, is followed by a typical moment where the guitars and drums join in, followed by the strings, followed by... uh, sound effects and a second cringey spoken word part from a different narrator.  Ye primordial gods, can we get on with it?  The whole mess also serves as an overlong intro to the first proper song.

Track Two:  "The Nameless"

Once we finally get to it, Ivo (this is one of his) drops an absolutely killer dissonant riff.  Chigrel does some throat clearing "yaarghs."  And then once he starts growling, all is forgiven.  Apparently I love melodic death metal, because once Chigrel is on pocket, "The Nameless" gets my head banging and makes it hard not to "sing" along with riff, chorus, and counterpointed "the nameless" chants alike.  What it comes down to is, this rocks.  If you can't tell that this rocks, I don't know what to tell you.

Don't know what to make of the frequent incorporation of Christian-inspired phrases throughout the record, like on this track "holy Father, thy will be done."  Maybe to make the parallels to monotheistic beliefs more obvious?  Thematically, makes sense to start with the most primordial, nameless diety, I guess.  

Sadly, this wonderful track ends up slightly contaminated by more child narration at the end.  Seriously, stop.  Let the songs speak for themselves.

Track Three:  "From Darkness"

The Interwebs seem to view "From Darkness" as a highlight.  The only reason I might disagree is that - spoiler - Origins is full of highlights.  Pipes and strings get to drive the folk elements and mostly lead the song, while the metal elements follow, so it's well placed after "The Nameless."  Quibbles?  Uh, lyrics are a little hard to understand, and maybe a little less catchy than others so that I like the song rather than loving it?  And I guess the guitar part is pretty basic, but I almost think that's by design, since the folk part of the song needs to shine.  Which it does.  I'm scraping for even things to criticize here as the record drives along.

Track Four:  "Celtos"

Finally Anna's vocals appear, along with some background chanting in mostly Gaulish.  The impossibly catchy melody gets tossed from what sounds like a mandolin (with a really nice violin counterpoint) to the Gaulish vocals to a Chigrel-fronted chorus with Anna joining in just enough to make me wish she were louder.  She and Chigrel sound so great together. 

"Celtos" is a special song to me.  It's the one that jumped through when I was first getting into the record.  This was folk metal with emphasis on folk and emphasis on metal, yet with a pure pop music sensibility somehow poking its way through.  And I, a fan of lyricists like Neil Peart and Derek Dick, was now singing lustily along to lines like "her first-born son, lo!, the sovereign Celtos!  The world marveled at the offspring of Autumnos."  And then there's one of those end-of song key changes that just makes me grin.  Love.  Love.  Now I recognize that "Celtos" is just the latest of the band's series of UisElveticore tracks that they put as #2 or #3 on every record, or that the melody seems to be designed to come as close as possible to just putting out "Tri Martolod"/"Inis Mona" again.  This knowledge has not in any way diminished my enjoyment of this particular version of that vibe.  Not to mention the fact that placement on the tracklist is perfect too: within three songs Eluveitie have given us so many sides of melodeathfolk.

Track Five:  "Virunus"

"One man!  To fight on the blood-red mountainside!"  Another chant-along chorus, this time leaning more into the heroic, battle-hungry side of metal that Eluveitie are trafficking in a little less overall on Origins.  So catchy.  How do they keep pulling this off?  I sometimes forget how much I enjoy "Virunus" until it starts playing, and then I'm all "oh yeah, this one!  This rules!"

Oh, that's why.  Shut up, narrator guy.  And I guess the outro is longer than it needs to be.  But hey, piano!

Track Six:  "Nothing (intermezzo)"

A pretty worthless spoken-word transition piece with yet a third narrator.  At least the line "everything that is sprang from what was" isn't bad.  Next, please.  Well, a melody starts building that leads us into...

Track Seven:  "The Call Of The Mountains"

Normally I'd be all about Anna stepping forward and taking a song all to herself with no Chigrel, after hearing too little of her vocals so far.  And this is a good vocal performance in which she convincingly talks us through a reflective downtrodden moment and then shifts into a soaring metal chorus.  And the mix of hurdy gurdy and guitar provides a good backdrop.  And the lyrics are an exercise in the poetic form where each line in a stanza starts with the same phrase.  You know, this is quite a good pop-folk-metal track.  I guess the only reason I'd say I don't love it is simply that I do find that the chorus starts to get a little old if I hear the song too much, because it's a pretty repetitious track.  Still good, not genius. 

Most streaming versions of Origins include as bonus tracks four other versions of "The Call Of The Mountains" in various other regional languages.  The pop-leaning side of Eluveitie tried to push this hard as a hit single, and it's one of the top listed tracks on the streaming services, whereas I understand the original lead single was "King."  What kind of band are you?  All of them!

Track Eight:  "Sucellos"*

Coming off our lady pop-metal track one would expect Eluveitie to go hard with a heavy one, a la "Havoc."  They kinda do, but here with more of a one-note thrashy almost stoner riff.  I want to highlight th beginning here.  On top of that riff right when it's seeming like it'll be a pounding metal song, in comes the hurdy gurdy playing off the base guitar riff brilliantly such that they can only be described as co-leads.  And then one or the other of the winds comes in with a counterpoint on top of that, like a fugue.  Glorious.  Is it even fair for these guys to be so good at this?  Chigrel goes on to own "Sucellos" as best he can with yet another top-notch chorus.  I mentioned falling in love with "Celtos" above, but on very first listen, when I didn't know anything about this band, the appeal of the "thou art my shepherd" part is what first made me say "yeah, definitely something to this record, it'll be worth at least three listens."  

Suddenly in comes Andrew again - "and there was nothing."

Track Nine:  "Inception"

Which takes us straight into another thrashy number that thematically builds on the previous one, as well as the vague concept of a certain type of immortality that runs through Origins.  Here I like the frenetic violin-n'-flute riffage throughout, and I adore the way the strings create a minor descending note that harmonizes with the note Chigrel is hitting on the first and third measures of the chorus; as always, I love a good dissonance.  This time the bridge is built around a spoken-word section that's... okay, I suppose.  Another winner overall, although I think the song needed one more chorus.

Track Ten:  "Vianna"

Quite possibly the most perfect piece of ear candy this band has ever created, in my mind.  Forget "Celtos" (not really, "Celtos" rules) and check this out.  Anna propels the verses and kills those, and then that incredible chorus.  Wow!  Eluveitie only sparingly do the "beauty and the beast" vocal thing with Anna singing a phrase and Chigrel following with a guttural counterpoint, yet are so amazingly good at it when they do.  Meanwhile, Ivo and Merlin are just pounding out an even better than usual metal line whilst all the folk instruments are putting together an incredibly lively piece that could stand alone but here synergizes with everything else.  I was so excited to get back to Origins so I could listen to this one in particular a bunch more (I was holding off while working through the earlier records).  This song makes me glad to be alive.  If all music sounded like "Vianna," I would never take out my earbuds.    

Sadly I can't just listen to "Vianna" on a loop forever, although I have tried.  I probably need to talk about the rest of the record at some point.

Track Eleven:  "The Silver Sister"

After a wonderful harmonic intro with what sounds like a xylophone or something (which also forms the basis for the solo section), Origins finally gets back to delivering a song that I merely quite enjoy rather than being unable to imagine listening to anything else.  Chorus doesn't have quite as big a hook, although I like the interplay between the guitars, and it's another good track for Merlin.  If this is your "lesser" album track, your album is an all-timer.  I feel like this is hyperbole, but fuck it - "The Sliver Sister" is a lesser Origins song and would a career highlight for a middling band and an upper tier track for most of the bands in the world.

 

Track Twelve:  "King"

I can't stop banging my head during the verses and I don't even know whether to credit the guitar, the folk , or the vocals.  And then a really hooky chorus!  Lest one think that this is just one good track among many, "King" delivers a mid-song breakdown in which Nicole (I assume) just goes nuts on the fiddle with a part that I half-imagine that Meri must have somehow written.  And that's not enough, so after a perfectly placed fifteen seconds or so of somber fiddle, the chorus goes a step higher, a bit more triumphant, and Anna's backing vocals get emphasized.  "King" isn't my absolute favorite Eluveitie song, but I think if I had the assignment "explain this band in one song," well, "King" encapsules this thing that they do so well like none other.

Track Thirteen:  "The Day Of Strife"

Throw in a full chorus of backing vocals, mostly male, because why not?  Here I confess to a little bit of album fatigue at which point it's becoming a little long to sit through.  Good song that gets lost a bit in the shuffle of great songs.  I can't think of any specific thing that "The Day Of Strife" does that some other track on the record doesn't do better, and I really listen to it when doing Origins straight through... which, fortunately, is often.

Track Fourteen:  "Ogmios (intermezzo)"

Remember when Eluveitie used to do real interludes with nice instrumental passages that really broke up the barrage of metal properly instead of this spoken word bullshit?

Track Fifteen:  "Carry The Torch"

I took some time to come around on the closer - it's in Gaulish so it maybe seemed like one track too much.  I came around.  The pipes and guitars dance around each other well enough that CTT could have been an instrumental.  But Chigrel has to make his presence known - rolling his 'r's in a way that somehow sounds more impressive in a foreign language - and you know, that's nice too.  Throw in a little Anna presence on both backing vocals and gurdy during the chorus, and one of the few true guitar solos in the Eluveitie ouvre, and you've got yet another very strong track to send the audience (me) home happy.  All praise whichever gods led us to in a roundabout way get this album!

Track Sixteen:  "Eternity (outro)"

"So here we are."  A reasonable speech about, well, eternity, that's nice and short, and a nice gentle outro that resembles but isn't quite the same as the one from "Origins."  And some wind.  I'll accept this as a cooldown.

Additional thoughts:

)  So, I guess the record is kind of okay, huh?  No, seriously, I'm sure it's obvious but I fucking love Origins.  I love all of this band's output so far and this may still be my favorite.  This is far from universal and I know there's a vocal crop of Slania-era fans who are bored to shit but what Eluveitie had to offer by this point.  I don't know what to tell them except that this record is for me.  I have an absolute sweet spot of what's grandiose without being too cheesy, accessible and catchy without being too poppy, full of variety while still being a coherent musical statement, and apparently Origins is that sweet spot for me.

) Nobody and nothing is perfect.  I'll admit that the length here threatens to be a bit much - it is a lot of wall to wall metal with few spots to take a breath.  But how much can I really complain when basically almost every song is an absolute banger?  Just classic after classic.  But speaking of interludes, I do think it's worth mentioning again that all the spoken word stuff is out of control.  I don't relate to it at all, and it's a poor substitute for the old folky instrumentals (or how about some Evocations style short non-metal tunes in Gaulish or something?).  Even worse, the various narrators are spilling into the "normal" songs now.  Go.  Away.  

Also, "The Call Of The Mountains" ends with a fucking children's choir.  No.  Bad band!  (It is a well known fact that only two rock songs have ever successfully employed a children's choir.  Those songs are "Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2" and "Panic."  That's it.  Those are the only ones.  None other ever will.)

) Can I say enough about how much Ivo is killing it all record long with the riffs?  I don't know who wrote what, but for all that some people complain about Eluveitie's metal side being uninspired compared to its folk side, these are some riffs, man.

) A few turns of phrase are starting to repeat themselves.  From "Sucellos," "sempiternal force, fire of existence."  Not to be confused with a sempiternal ember?  And from the outro, "does not the blackbird still sing its song?"  That's of course a reworking of a line from "Alesia" on the last record.

) Origins has to be seen as the end of a major era for the band.  Päde (bagpipes, whistles, and occasional vox) left the band in the middle of the tour, under apparently acrimonious circumstances, soon after the record's release.  Then the bigger damage to near-founding members came after Chigrel forced Merlin Sutter out of the band, for reasons unclear, and Ivo and Anna both decided to follow him.  So between losing them, and Meri and Siméon a few years earlier, a huge part of the band's songwriting core is just gone going forward.  Unless of course one believes that Eluveitie fundamentally is Chigrel and a bunch of hired hands, in which case they'll just carry on with no major changes.

For better and for worse, the road splits here.  Will we get a Fish/Marillion situation where, no matter how much I may mock one party, the world gets twice as much worthwhile music and everyone involved is happier on a personal level?  Or was this particular combination lightning in a bottle?  I will opine as I move on.  As noted, I will be blogging about both the main band continuing to Chigrelify away and the Anna-fronted splinter band Cellar Darling, doing their own thing.  Based on two listens to their first record a while ago, I believe that Cellar Darling is about as un-Eluveitie-ish as you can get whilst still being a folk-metal band, so, should be fun!

Favorite track:  "Vianna"

Runner up:  "King"

Least favorite track (actual songs only):  "The Day Of Strife"

Rating:  5/5

 

Definitive running list of records by Eluveitie that I have listened to so far, in order of what I have decided is unambiguously their quality

1)  Origins

2)  Everything Remains (As It Never Was)

3)  Slania

4)  Helvetios

5)  Spirit

6)  Evocation I – The Arcane Dominion

 

On to Cellar Darling's This Is The Sound and Eluveitie's Evocation II, probably in that order, whenever I get around to them!

*Would it TMI to reveal that I kinda get turned on by all the whip noises in the intro to "Sucellos?"