Eluveitie - Slania (2008) - Solid as a monolith and a perfect magic potion - 85% (09/05/11)

After the very weak “Vên” and the schizophrenic “Spirit”, Eluveitie have learned from their mistakes and present the perfect mixture of Celtic folk melodies and Scandinavian death metal. The album follows a clear guiding line and folk and metal elements are on a same and coherent level on this record filled with catchy choruses, beautiful melodies and epic as well as fast paced heavy passages.

The instrumentals like “Anaganthios” are full of beautiful emotions. They sound more profound and convince with simple but efficient melodies.

The heavier tracks also focus more on the folk elements than before and get to a perfect fusion. The catchy metal anthem “Inis Mona” surprises for example with a flute solo instead of a guitar solo while “Grey sublime archon” develops a mysterious and very ancestral atmosphere by exactly giving the same weight to both the electric instruments and the folk instruments. “Slanias Song” is an amazing mixture of folk and metal elements, of male growls and hypnotizing female chants crowned by a haunting and atmospheric middle part and an entertaining tension that is kept throughout almost six minutes. Another amazing song is “Tarvos” that seems to tell an epic medieval story and almost works like a little radio play or movie score without losing its heaviness and without sounding too much like some overwhelming kitsch that bands like “Alestorm” or “Turisas” tend to play.

Even the heaviest songs like the fast paced “Bloodstained ground” preserve the folk elements this time and the band seems to have found the perfect balance on this record and carved their merited place in the long list of modern folk metal bands.

Only a few songs in the end can’t impress. “Calling the rain” should sound more appropriate to its own title topic and finally presents us nothing outstanding and a rather one sided death metal track. The closing “Elembivos” is an interesting folk sound collage with a mysterious atmosphere full of whispering voices and with a great guitar solo but the track turns out to be too long and too repeating overall. But those two rather mediocre final tracks can’t scrap the perfect impressions of nearly three quarters of this very well done record.

Nevertheless, this album can be seen as the climax of a constant development of the band and means the breakthrough of their so-called new wave of folk metal as this record is by far their best album until now.