(Nuclear Blast) Total Time: 44.23
Unfortunately I caught a bad cold the last few days and wasn’t able to “chaperon” the listening of the fourth full length release of the “Helvetians” ELUVEITIE, “Everything Remains As It Never Was”, with a glass of Swiss beer so hopefully the elves and fairies of ELUVEITIE’s forest guide me throughout this task!
Not a long time since the release of the previous album “Evocation I The Arcane Dominion”, the band’s hastiness for another full length release seems to have ruined them the chance for a “better than that” project! Uneven in music style and yet repetitive enough, “Everything Remains (As It Never Was)” manages to provide the certainty of the uncertain and impels the listener deeper and deeper to a dark and fogy forest where creativity and substance have long turned themselves to trolls.
My negative thoughts and conclusions for this album lay on the fact that music must be a statement and not an establishment where all the bored and un-inspired musicians stow away! Nevertheless, folk melodic or Celtic if you like, death genre it’s not all about serious thinking nor meditation; it’s about feeling happy, being one with the forest and dancing the pain away…
“Everything Remains..” is a typical folk death metal album filled with pagan melodies, lots of bagpipes, violin, growling male death vocals during the whole album and female pop-like ones in some parts such as in tracks “Quoth The Raven” and “Lugdunon”, and with far too many instrumental tracks, four at number... The rhythms are moving from mid-tempo to up-tempo and the production is quite satisfying, giving successfully so much the pagan atmosphere as much as the aggressive aspect of the string instrumental march.
All in all I wouldn’t dare to say that the title of the album backfires at ELUVEITIE, but it could easily describe my feelings for this release…Yes, it’s all the same and was it ever there??
