Review: Eluveitie “Evocation II – Pantheon”

Eluveitie “Evocation II – Pantheon”
Nuclear Blast Records

I discovered Eluveitie back in 2008 via the Slania album, and I also caught them live, probably the same year, via the Paganfest tour that hit the UK. I think they played with the likes of Korpiklaani, Tyr and Moonsorrow. With Ensiferum headlining.

And after that, for whatever reason, they dropped off of my radar. Probably as the Folk Metal scene got over saturated and I got bored of the drivel getting pushed our way.

So it’s been quite a pleasant catch-up with Eluveitie, on this their 2^nd Celtic acoustic album.

Now, I have two angles for looking at this album.

The positive side is that tracks such as Epona and Lvgvs, which there are videos for online, are stunning examples of Eluveitie’s work. Gloriously upbeat pieces of Celtic flavoured Rock/Metal, with, I presume, Fabienne Erni, delivering some wonderful vocals.

The downside, is that this doesn’t flow like a conventional album. There are lots of little instrumental breaks and segues, all of which are very nice, but it just feels like a load of small clips stuck together with very little thought for the running order.

There are 18 tracks on this album and they average out at about 3 minutes a piece, so there’s no real scope for anything developing into something special, despite some of the tracks being very easy on the ear, especially the more upbeat jigs.

So while I’m really enjoying the content, the glue that is supposed to hold it all together needs a bit of work on it.

But the album has re-invigorated my interest in Eluveitie, so I’ll check out the albums I missed out on and I’ll see if the constant turnaround of band members did them any harm.

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