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Eluveitie: Everything Remains As It Never Was Folk Metal, Melodic Death Metal Century Media Records March 9th, 2010
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Review
Everything Remains As It Never Was is the fourth full-length release from the Melodic Death/Folk Metal band Eluveitie, and once again we are greated with mediocrity. It has been established that the act's material, especially on their last album, Slania, sounds almost as if it were Dark Tranquillity with the keyboards replaced with bagpipes and other folkish instruments. Sadly, this legacy doesn't change at all with this release, except to say that the band seems to have added a new influence into the mix. Sadly this album is not that impressive. Dark Tranquillity has been around much longer, so it's hard to say you never heard their material before heading into this album. So it seems that Eluveitie have decided to add some more idol worship to the mix by having some more fun-oriented tracks and vocal stylings that just sound like a bit of a deeper version of vocals presented on a Korpiklaani album, which is apparent on the title track "Everything Remains as It Never Was". However, this is not to say that this release is absolute garbage. While this album doesn't bring anything that new to the table, it's still a decent album that, at times, does try to be something a little different. For example, "The Essence of Ashes" shows the band really focusing on a more Folk feel to the music, which works out very well in their favor as the song is very far away from any established idol worship and really shows the potential the band has to create an original composition. Even the following instrumental track "Isara" is a somber, enjoyable folk song. Once the heavy "Kingdom Come Undone" kicks in though, it's back to the traditional Eluveitie sound until "Setlon" which is yet another instrumental that, if you have it going on in the background, will sound like a more powerfully performed version of "Isara". Either way, the track itself is just not that good to begin with. Luckily it does usher in another good, somewhat original track before "The Liminal Passage", yet another instrument comprised solely of bagpipes and background ambience that closes the album off with the title track being spoken lightly by a woman with an echo effect. That track, "Lugd'non", is another slower paced track that is very entertaining and manages to nicely incorporate the female vocals. All in all, Everything Remains As It Never Was isn't really a release that many listeners will embrace with open arms. While the music on here is well done, it's just nothing original, and often very cliche. The more original tracks on here are where it's at, but the replay value of this release is very low. While the album has some very Folk influenced instrumentals, they don't serve any purpose on this release other then to take up time and make the album look longer then it really is. Had "The Liminal Passage" at least been the openning track, especially with how the track closes, then there would have at least been a tone of ambience properly set since "Otherworld", the introductory instrumental, is a very confusing and ultimately misleading track that would act better as a way for the band to come out on stage then to start a CD.
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