Eluveitie - Helvetios (2012) - Finally back in strength - 78% (16/02/12)

Eluveitie is band that has always been lights and shades to me. They had truly amazing outputs such as "Slania" as well as one of the worst records I have ever heard in my entire life with "Vên". After the rather disappointing melodic death metal record "Everything Remains As It Never Was", the band finally delivers a great record once again with "Helvetios". The mixture between modern metal influences and addicting folk sounds of a bunch of diversified instruments such as the mandolin, the Uilleman pipes, the Bodhrán, the Gaita, the hurdy gurdy, the bagpipes, the fiddles and different whistles works way better than before. The band's music has also become more diversified, technical and progressive. The title track may already convince those who are critical towards this album but the best tracks are yet to come.

The choruses are very catchy and memorable and the band has also created many addicting melodies. The record is though a conceptual a record about the Gaulish wars of the Roman Empire on one side and the Barbarian raids on the other side as seen by the ancestors of the Swiss people. The great thing is that the story doesn't take too much space and the music still has a great flow without losing its guiding line and epic atmosphere. You can take the album as a whole and enjoy it but also pick single tracks out of the context like the epic and atmospheric "Santonian Shores" that gives the folk instruments enough air to breathe and space to stand out, the energizing single "Meet The Enemy" starts like an ordinary fast paced melodic death metal track that quickly leads into calm folk passages and a very surprising female vocal parts after several rapid changes of style and atmosphere or the enchanting "A Rose for Epona" that focuses more on the female than the male vocals and offers a refreshing change of style.

Even the songs that sound rather worn out at first sight turn out to include the special certain something to convince in the end which hasn't been the case on the last records. A good example is a track like "The Uprising". I was just about to skip the song after a fast paced beginning with mediocre melodic death metal vocals but the song was suddenly saved by folk orientated breaks an a atmospheric narrative passage that gave me unexpected goose bumps. I had to listen to this track a couple of times and really grew on me and became a highlight of this record.

The band delivers what they're known for but had a better focus on the song writing and the right mixture of the two faces of folk and death metal. They only try out something new with the song "Alesia". This track starts with dark piano melodies and breakable and highly emotional female vocals that remind me of Evanescence. The track gets darker and the female vocals harmonize well with the soft and atmospheric male growls and lead to a truly addicting chorus. If the band decided to put this track out as a single, they could probably gather a lot of new fans and have a little commercial success. This song has a lot of mainstream potential without sounding too random as this is still one hundred percent Eluveitie. I would have liked to hear more experiments of that kind on this record. The band delivers what we expected in a very strong way but musically, they are not very innovative on this new output.

That being said, there are also a couple of weaker tracks like the overlong ethereal and vocal orientated interlude "Scorched Earth". The real problem lies elsewhere though as many tracks sound rather exchangeable and make this record feel a little bit stretched. The band should have shortened the record by fifteen minutes or so and cut out three or four fillers to create a true killer album.

Nevertheless, the band is back with a bang and delivers its second best output after "Slania" in my humble opinion. Anybody that has lost interest in the band because of the last outputs should skip the rest and check this one out. This is how I like Eluveitie and they present us everything they stand for. Let's hope that they have learnt from their mistakes and start a progressive evolution this time by creating more experimental songs with the perfect mixture of authentic folk magic and the power and emotions of metal music instead of doing another boring and overrated acoustic output or a pointless modern death metal record with some lost folk interludes. Let's be optimistic and say that it's worth to keep an eye on their evolution and give them another chance after this great strike that pardon a little bit for the mistakes of the past.