SouthSideoftheSky
“The preach about love, or so I am told”
With Pagan, Cruachan continues to provide us with their inspired and unique fusion of traditional Celtic Folk music and Metal. Compared to the previous Folk-Lore, Pagan has much more of Keith Fay’s aggressive vocals but these are delightfully alternated with the clean vocals of Karen Gilligan and almost every song is a duet between the two. While I liked Folk-Lore on my first listen, I did not at first like the present album; but it has grown on me a lot and now I consider it to be almost as brilliant as Folk-Lore. Many Metal fans would probably prefer the present album since it is admittedly more of a Metal album, but no less Celtic! The symphonic elements are still present as well which makes for a distinctive sound and approach by these pioneers of Celtic Metal.
The production of Pagan is less than perfect, or so I initially felt. But after a few listens I stopped being bothered by the (apparently) weak production and came to realize that this is probably how the band intended it to sound. The closer The Fall Of Gondolin which first appeared on the band’s debut album from 1995 sounds much better here and is one of the several highlights of this album. Overall, Pagan flows very well from beginning till end and many songs share a common theme; namely, liberation from foreign powers throughout the ages, in particular Irish liberation from be it Vikings, Christians or the British.
Some Say The Devil Is Dead is different from the other songs in that it is more of a Folk Punk song! I guess that a whole album full of such songs would be of minimal interest to me, but within the context of the other songs here it actually adds something of positive value. This all makes for another interesting album from Cruachan that deserves much more attention from the Metal community and also from fans of Prog and Folk Rock.
Highly recommended in addition to the, in my opinion, even better Folk-Lore album