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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Eluveitie - Helvetios review

Year : 2012 
Genre : Folk, Viking Metalcore
Label : Nuclear Blast Records
Origin : Switzerland
Rating : 6.0 / 10

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Right away I'm going to tell you that this very disc might be a splendid choice if fighting Krakens and zombie Valkyries is Tuesday for you. Some claim this disc to be a folk death metal release, a notion which made my curiosity skyrocket, yet, this music, in my opinion is a rather self-indulgent galore of family safe Viking (?) orthodoxies that are more than enough to put me to Alpha at the third of this disc. Luckily, I could kept my awareness intact with a book while listening to this monster-length 1 hour+ LP. The cause of my highly terrible fear of this delivery is the simple fact that the data on it is heavily fixated on the power metalish stance of fantasy related fighting, and there is fighting in it, too. Sometimes, the fantasy fighting is interrupted by lamentations of fighting. It's the backing track for live fantasy, arranged throughout very standard metalcore verse structures.

Indeed, Swiss Eluveitie combines Viking (!!) metalcore with a very superficial rendition of folk, seeking to imbue the music with the feeling of Irish fairy tale music. The production is quite sterile and traditional metal at its core, - SIC! - with no desire to spice up the flow of things with notable high frequency detail. This music BEGS for epic solos, and you won't get a SINGLE instance of them. Yet, you have exotic folk pipes, capable to produce one sound, but there is a "short" and a "long" variant of that note. Everything is pretty straightforward mid frequency guitar warfare, sometimes rode by Irish folk violins. Read on to find out more about this.


The fray sometimes is spiced up by a much welcomed female singer with a nice timber to her pipes. Sometimes she is forced to move out of her comfort zone, and she looks much worse there than in it. Her participation is much less frequent, unfortunately, than I would have had prefer, and the majority of this one hour affair is narrated by a Viking angry metal guy who sounds to be occupied by themes of seeking spiritual solace and function amidst the community, and wielding melee combat and spilling gallons of generic enemy blood. I claimed not so much long ago that the compositions are prone to exhibit metalcoresque verse structures. You know the methodology : bang on the open strings, and sometimes interrupt the chugging by a pattern of notes seeking to exhibit intimidating qualities. This technique is a super-persistent tendency herein. The only pseudo-deviation from these pastimes is equivalent with the Michael Flatley fairy tale music that seeks to color up the shape of Viking metalcore affections. The ingredient in question comes with shallow anatomy, and is super-hasty to peak in with its limited top capacity. Irish folk music, you know : three seconds of pure magic, then, the next already is the start of full blown high fantasy retardation. By the 10th second mark, I'm a caught in the terrible act pedophile gnome with a penis for a nose, running from a Viking band of bards, cheered by a pack of valiant high elves and morally eloquent village people. No thank you.

Rating : 6.0 / 10

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