ELUVEITIE — Evocation I - The Arcane Dominion (review)

ELUVEITIE — Evocation I - The Arcane Dominion album cover

Album · 2009 · Non-Metal

4/5 · 2012-02-15
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Evocation I - The Arcane Dominion is the third album from Switzerland’s Eluveitie. After putting out a couple of hybrid folk metal/melodic death metal albums, earning a reputation for their second album Slania in particular, Eluveitie decided to produce an album that stripped the metal out of their sound and moved frontman Chrigel Glanzmann into the background and stuck hurdy gurdy player Anna Murphy in his place as the band’s lead vocalist. This can only be beyond awful right?

Well actually it’s not. In fact although I know I’m going to get some flak for this, but Evocation I is actually, as far as I’m concerned, Eluveitie’s best album. At least it’s the only album of theirs that I feel really warrants the regard they’ve received within the folk metal scene, with the paradox in that sentence being that this isn’t even a metal album.

Allow me to explain myself. I’ve never been big on Eluveitie on a personal or even professional level. Slania is a solid and respectable album but I never felt it was masterful or anything, and their prior releases never really grabbed me. I also didn’t have a high opinion at all of Evocation I’s successor, Everything Remains as it Never Was. The problem was I also felt that Eluveitie’s Celtic folk sounds were right on the mark, but their metal was generally lacking. Then in 2009 they pulled Evocation I out of the hat, gave the metal the boot and allowed their folk influences to shine.

And shine it does. Evocation I features a nice varied approach to the folk instrumentation that ranges from the melancholic to the energetic. The lyrics on the album are mostly in the language Gaulish, giving an ancient and authentic feel to the folk music produced. This is spoiled slightly by the band retaining some small use of death growling in a few places, showing something of an unwillingness to complete isolate the sound from their past work, and seriously death growling plus pure folk music is a total no go. Fortunately it’s used sparingly.

Vocals are not as common in the album as a typical Eluveitie release. Many songs come across as quite ritual-like, although since I don’t know the first thing about Gaulish I can’t really tell what anything is about, although I do know that based on her dominant vocal contributions to the album the band should just move Anna Murphy up to the microphone full-time, since her vocals have much more charm and work better with the folk than Chrigel Glanzmann’s growl ever did. It only takes the more song-like tracks Brictom and Omnos to fully realise this.

I guess for those who are used to their normal work, Evocation I is a bit of a weird one, which may stop fans of the band from fully realising what a treasure the album really is. It would be fair to put it down as an acquired taste certainly, although I’d like to think that any metal fan who listens to folk metal regularly will be able to appreciate just want has been created here.

Unfortunately as I mentioned earlier Eluveitie went back to the day job so to speak after this album, and Everything Remains as it Never Was majorly disappointed me and they’re also just put out their fifth album, Helvetios, another metal album, which I haven’t heard yet but will be getting a review sometime in the near future. Fortunately as the title of this one suggests it’s actually the first part of a two album concept, so one day we should be treated to an Evocation II. I for one however wish that Eluvietie would get their act in gear and realise that this is what they are really good at. Evocation one has a few small hiccups, but this is only just below the borderline of a true masterpiece.

9.4/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))