{"id":22345,"date":"2014-10-30T00:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T00:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=22345"},"modified":"2014-11-12T21:36:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T21:36:00","slug":"feature-eluveitie-10-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-eluveitie-10-14\/","title":{"rendered":"ELUVEITIE – Carrying The Torch (October 2014) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

ELUVEITIE – Carrying The Torch<\/strong><\/span>
\nAnthony Morgan<\/span>
\nOctober 2014<\/span><\/p>\n

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Eluveitie (l-r): Ivo Henzi, Nicole Ansperger, Rafael Salzmann, Patrick Wistler, Chrigel Glanzmann, Kay Brem, Merlin Sutter and Anna Murphy<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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\nSongwriting sessions in support of August 2014 studio full-length Origins<\/em> \u2013 the sixth to be issued by Winterthur, Zurich, Switzerland-based folk \/ death metal outfit Eluveitie \u2013 mirrored songwriting sessions that had taken place for Eluveitie\u2019s past five outings. Prior to authoring tracks, Eluveitie founder, vocalist and all-round multi-instrumentalist Chrigel Glanzmann devises a concept for the given record in its entirety. <\/p>\n

\u201cBefore I start writing particular songs, I kind of need to get a picture of the album as a whole in front of my inner eye,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt was like that for Origins<\/em> as well, but probably what\u2019s a bit different this time is that on one hand it was… Musically, it was quite a big production, because we have been working together with quite some different parties. We worked together with a classical choir, we worked together with a children\u2019s choir, we had an orchestra, and guest voice artist Alexander Morton. Conceptually and especially lyrically, it has been one of the most let\u2019s say work-intensive albums so far. The main topic of the album deals with Gaulish \u2013 which means early Celtic \u2013 mythology in general, but in particular, the album or particular songs are kind of retelling aetiological tales from ancient Gaul, which means things like origin myths and foundation legends, and stuff like that. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery human culture has those kinds of myths, from a story about how the world came to be, how the earth came to be, to stories of the origins of important cities and whatever. Every human culture has always had those kinds of myths and legends, and so did the Celts of course. It\u2019s a very fascinating topic, but also not a very easy one. We actually do not know that much about it, so it was hell of a lot of scientific work. It took me more than year. I worked together with three different universities, with different scientists, for the lyrics on the album, so that was pretty intense. Yeah, that\u2019s basically what I can say about it. That\u2019s what the album is dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Songwriting-wise, the involvement of a specific Eluveitie member has steadily grown over the years. \u201cIt\u2019s basically me who writes most of the music, but over the years, I\u2019ve started to work with one of our guitar players \u2013 Ivo (Henzi, rhythm guitars) \u2013 a lot more,\u201d the frontman credits. \u201cToday, he\u2019s actually quite involved \u2013 especially in the guitar work \u2013 and contributed quite a lot of the guitar work on this album. Yeah though, basically it\u2019s me who writes the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lyrically exploring aetiological tales from ancient Gaul is wide-ranging in scope, something that could arguably be spread across several platters. \u201cHonestly, yes and no,\u201d Chrigel ponders. \u201cIt always depends on the way that you wanna write about things. After all, you could produce ten albums about one single story if you wanted to. Of course you could do that, but as I said before, today we actually do not know that much about the origin myths of the Celts, or about Celtic mythology in general. I know that the internet is full of stuff about it (laughs), but 99% of that to be honest is just pure crap, which means it\u2019s modern, kind of New Age-ish, made up stuff, which actually doesn\u2019t have that much to do with the original Celtic culture in general. If you wanna work historically founded on a scientific level though \u2013 as we do and have always done \u2013 you will actually have to face the fact that it\u2019s not that much we do know about it, and it\u2019s not that much you can really substantiate. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe main reason for that is that the Celts… I mean, the Celts wrote like any other culture in human history, but they refused to write down anything if it came to spiritual or mythological topics. They refused to do that for a religious reason actually, which is because the Celtic druids taught that you weren\u2019t allowed to write about those topics. They taught that spiritual things and mythology and all that are things that you should have in your heart, and in your mind. You should memorise those things, and not just keep them in a book where you can look them up. On the other hand, they also believed that \u2013 especially when it came to spirituality \u2013 as soon as you write down let\u2019s say a tenet or a spiritual thought, it becomes a dogma and loses its flexibility and everything. Yeah, this is why they refused to write down anything about their beliefs or their spirituality, and mythology. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo today, all we actually really do know about Celtic mythology and spirituality we only know due to some archaeological findings and mostly due to ancient literary testimonies \u2013 things that historians and scientists from all of the cultures wrote down, mostly Greeks and Romans who visited Gaul back then and wrote about what they saw and experienced. Imagine if a Greek historian or a Greek scientist for example visited Gaul back then though, and described what he saw and what he learnt from talking to druids and everything. He\u2019s still describing a culture that is totally alien to himself, so there\u2019s a lot of reading between the lines, and there\u2019s a lot of scientific work to actually get to the core of something that you could call an adequate picture of Gaul\u2019s culture. <\/p>\n

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\u201cTake ten people from England and send them to some African tribe or whatever for a week, and then describe what they see. If you do that then you will get ten completely different pictures, because it always depends on the personality, and it always depends on where this person grew up, the perception of this person and so on. Yeah, this is the main thing that actually does make it quite complicated and work-intensive, because all of the things that we do know about Celtic mythology we basically know from people from other cultures \u2013 like, as I said, mostly Greek and Romans that described the Celtic culture. This is one of the main topics in working to get an adequate and real picture of the Celtic culture and Celtic mythology, by what those people from other cultures wrote about it. That\u2019s actually why it\u2019s quite a difficult and work-intensive topic to write an album about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Origins<\/em> is musically similar to previous Eluveitie records. \u201cBefore I started the songwriting though, we basically just came back home from Eluveitie\u2019s world tour,\u201d the singer notes. \u201cThat was our most extended world tour to date. It took us a bit more than two-and-a-half years, and during those two-and-a-half years we didn\u2019t do much else besides playing shows and playing our instruments, and practising our asses off. I think every single band member actually grew as a musician pretty much, and quite a lot during those two-and-a-half years. I would say that is something you can definitely hear on Origins<\/em>; compared to the other albums, composition-wise it\u2019s pretty much on a higher level musically. It\u2019s pretty complex stuff, and pretty hard to play. Also, I think that a lot of the songs kind of got a bit darker and harsher, and also more complex probably. That\u2019s what I would say is the main difference actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

To critique Origins<\/em> against past Eluveitie material, one would need to be familiar with Eluveitie\u2019s musical style. \u201cHonestly, I think describing music and putting labels on it is rather your job than mine,\u201d Chrigel laughs. \u201cWe don\u2019t really care about that, but since you asked me, I don\u2019t know. I think when I formed the band 12 years ago, the motivation to form Eluveitie was basically that I wanted to bring together the two kinds of music that I personally love most. I\u2019ve been a death metal musician for many years \u2013 I don\u2019t remember how many. I formed my first death metal band in 1991. I\u2019ve just been playing death metal for a very long time and that\u2019s kind of my music or something, but I\u2019ve also been playing traditional Celtic folk music for many years. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the instruments that we have and use on our albums are just the most common instruments in Celtic folk music, and that\u2019s basically it. To me, it was always a 100% clear that all of the folk aspects have to be played with real instruments and played traditionally the way they\u2019re supposed to be played, and not just have some fucking shambles on keyboards or whatever (laughs). <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I just always wanted to bring those two kinds of music together because to me, I don\u2019t know. It just works well together, and it almost belongs together in a way. I would say that that\u2019s what Eluveitie is. That\u2019s what we began as, and what we still are. It\u2019s like a 100% melodic death metal and a 100% traditional Celtic folk music, but both just within one band. That\u2019s how I would describe our band.\u201d<\/p>\n

The arrival of lead guitarist Rafael Salzmann was revealed on September 6th, 2012, as well as the departure of predecessor Simeon Koch. Violinist Nicole Ansperger\u2019s addition to the ranks came to light on December 11th, 2013, meanwhile, occupying a position vacated by Meri Tadi\u0107. \u201cIt was good,\u201d the mainman comments. \u201cWe\u2019ve just had two line-up changes during the last two years. After many years of playing with us, our former guitar player as well as our former fiddle player at some point decided to leave the band for personal reasons, family stuff \u2013 actually, for both of them. They didn\u2019t want to be on the road all the fucking time any more and stuff like that, so yeah. We\u2019ve just been looking around, and we were really honestly super-happy to have found Rafael and especially Nicole. Yeah, that\u2019s pretty much all I can say about it. They\u2019re good, they\u2019re great. They\u2019re both very passionate musicians and yeah, that\u2019s basically all I can say about it (laughs). We were just super-happy with them, to get hold of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potential recruits were required to fulfil specific criteria. \u201cIt was basically skills that we were looking for, especially for the violin,\u201d Chrigel tells. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t very easy, because there are quite a lot of really insanely good folk fiddlers around. Most of them though, probably all of them, would never, ever want to play in a fucking death metal band. On the other hand, there are quite a few fiddle players around that actually are metalheads and play metal music, but again, most of them are not really good to be honest (laughs). Especially if it comes to the fiddle, to the violin, the things we play and have in our songs are really fucking hard to play. To be able to play Eluveitie songs, you really would have to be a really fucking insanely good violin player. <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, we had quite a couple of candidates, and so we were looking at different people. We weren\u2019t 100% convinced with them, but it\u2019s not exactly that you have much of a choice. Then one evening, I just received an email from a friend of our band who was like \u2018Oh yeah. By the way, I know this girl who plays the violin, and she likes metal. Why not check her out?\u2019 I was like \u2018Okay, yeah.\u2019 I didn\u2019t expect much (laughs), but then Nicole sent me some kind of a CV. Already, just reading it, I was really impressed, because she had been a professional musician for 15 years or something. She has a classical education; she has been playing the violin since she was a little girl \u2013 she had played many, many hundreds of shows already. Everything I read was really impressive. I was like \u2018Woah, okay. I didn\u2019t expect that,\u2019 and then she sent me some YouTube links of live performances with some of her former bands. I checked that out, and I was just blown away. <\/p>\n

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\u201cI was like \u2018Holy fucking shit. That girl is really, really fucking good,\u2019 but the craziest thing \u2013 which I believe is actually quite a funny story \u2013 is when I first talked to her, all of the fiddle candidates that we had, I sent them… I don\u2019t know… I think it was six Eluveitie songs \u2013 six really different Eluveitie songs to practice. I sent those songs to them \u2013 sheet-notes and everything \u2013 and told them to please learn those songs, and when they were ready to come to band rehearsal, play with us, and then we would see. Usually, that\u2019s the most normal thing. Usually, every violin player said they would probably need a month or two to learn those six songs. Of course, I sent them six very difficult songs, but then with Nicole it was different. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe always practice on Tuesdays. When I sent her the songs and gave her a phone call, it was a Friday. Yeah, I just mailed her those six songs, and then I called her just to make sure that she had everything she needed to learn those songs. Then I asked her \u2018What do you think? How much time do you need to learn those songs?,\u2019 but then she reacted kind of confused. She said \u2018What do you mean?\u2019 I said \u2018Yeah, let me know how many weeks you need to learn those songs,\u2019 and then she was even more confused. She asked \u2018Don\u2019t you just practice on Tuesdays?\u2019 I said \u2018Yes, why?,\u2019 and then she answered \u2018Well, I will come on Tuesday\u2019 (laughs). I didn\u2019t believe her. I was just like \u2018Are you fucking kidding me? Are you seriously telling me that you got those songs today \u2013 on Friday \u2013 and you will be ready to play them perfectly on Tuesday? You\u2019ve gotta be kidding me?\u2019 She was like \u2018No, of course. That\u2019s normal. Of course I will come on Tuesday,\u2019 and then of course I accepted, but I thought \u2018Yeah, yeah.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cThen obviously she came those four days later, and she just completely blew us away. She just came to the rehearsal room, and she played those six songs not only perfectly, but even so much better than they\u2019ve ever been played in our band (laughs). She just completely blew us away, and that\u2019s actually when we didn\u2019t have any more questions. We were just like \u2018Okay, you\u2019re the one. That\u2019s it\u2019 (laughs). That was pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Origins<\/em> was cut at New Sound Studio in Pf\u00e4ffikon, Switzerland with Tommy Vetterli, as was the case for previous outing Helvetios<\/em> (February 2012). \u201cPretty much the same there,\u201d the composer shares with regards to the process. \u201cIt was pretty much the same on every album before (laughs). We\u2019ve been working together with Tommy for many years now, and yeah, it was good. It was a long time; we were in the studio for two to two-and-a-half months, or something. Yeah, it was good. It was a very intense time, especially because \u2013 as I mentioned earlier \u2013 it was just a really big production since we were working together with really quite some different parties, like a classical choir, an orchestra, and everything. It was a pretty huge production, but yeah, it was good. It was intense, but really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Tommy Vetterli is accredited as being behind in the production chair, his contribution towards Origins<\/em> was perhaps not as significant as the title suggests. \u201cNot that much, honestly,\u201d Chrigel off-handedly judges his contributions as being. \u201cWell, no, I cannot say it like that. He always contributes a lot to our albums, but basically, if it comes to the sound, we work together with him a lot on the sounds of every single instrument. With the guitars for example, in the last few weeks we were sitting together with Tommy just to find the right things for everything, starting with the guitars, which instruments would the instruments build off of, which strings, which whatever. That went up to which cabinets, which amps, blah, blah, blah, whatever. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe way we work together is that we always keep our productions very pure, in a way. If you record an album, then there\u2019s not that much artificial work. There\u2019s not that much editing and not that much \u2018magic\u2019 to be done after recording in the mixing process. If you compared just the pure recording without any mixing or nothing for example and the final album, you would actually notice that \u2013 for example \u2013 the guitar sound or the drum sound didn\u2019t change that much. We invest a hell of a lot of time in those things, but besides that, when it comes to production itself, we basically produce our albums ourselves and Tommy\u2019s just basically kind of a co-pilot or something. He usually doesn\u2019t have any impact on the arrangements and the production; basically, we do that ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

An engineering credit for Tommy would\u2019ve perhaps been more appropriate. \u201cYeah,\u201d the lyricist seconds. \u201cActually, yes. That\u2019s the way we\u2019ve been working with him for… I don\u2019t know… the last four years now, and that\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tommy Vetterli additionally handled mixing duties, mixing death metal elements as well as folk instruments being arguably more fickle than conventional fare. \u201cMixing is mixing,\u201d Chrigel contends. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re mixing a fucking Mot\u00f6rhead album with three instruments, or if you\u2019re mixing an orchestra from a Mozart symphony or something like that. Of course nevertheless though, the more instruments you have, the harder it gets and the more difficult it gets, especially to get everything heard properly and so on. Yeah, what can I say? I think that\u2019s just something that needs experience, and yeah, I think that\u2019s all about it I can say. <\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, in our songs there\u2019s always a hell of a lot going on. Just to give you one example, the song \u2018The Nameless\u2019 from our recent album Origins<\/em> had 120… I think it was even more. It was almost 150 tracks to be mixed, just for that one song. Of course that\u2019s hell of a lot, but then again, I think that\u2019s just something that needs experience as I said. With every album production, you learn and you get better at that, and it\u2019s also what we\u2019re trying to do. With every album production, we try to put into action what we learnt with the previous production. I think that\u2019s basically it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Chrigel himself designed the cover artwork for Origins<\/em>. \u201cMostly, I do all of the artworks for our band,\u201d he informs. \u201cAs soon as I finished the album concept and as soon as it was clear what the album would be about those mythological topics, it was clear that on one hand we wanted something very simple. For the artwork, something almost a bit abstract maybe, but also something that kind of symbolises the lyrical content of the album. I started looking for something to express the lyrical content of the album. I\u2019ve also been working together with Zurich university, with scientists specialising in Celtic art for that. <\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s put it this way: if for example Origins<\/em> would have been a concept album on Catholic Christianity, then it would\u2019ve been easy. We just could\u2019ve printed a fucking crucifix on the front cover, but compared to Celtic culture, the Celts don\u2019t have kind of a symbol or something that represents their beliefs, or their mythology, or something like that. It was quite a lot of research to find something adequate. As I said, in particular the album deals with those Celtic origin myths, those legends that tell the origins of Celtic culture and everything. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn all those legends and myths there is one Celtic god who appears over and over again, which is the Celtic god named Succellos. All over the Celtic areas of Europe, there have been Succellos artifacts found during archaeological excavations. In one of them, Succellos was depicted with this kind of sun-shaped halo, but the single rays were not sun rays. They were hammers, like these old, double-headed hammers. He holds one in his right hand, and so this hammer-shaped halo is what you can see on the front cover of Origins<\/em>. That\u2019s basically what it is about. In many origin myths of the Celts this Celtic god appears, because the Celts believed themselves to be of some divine ancestry. They believed themselves to be descendants of a god from the other world. We\u2019re not able to prove that scientifically today a 100%, but most likely it was this particular god named Succellos the Celts believed themselves to be descendants of. You can see Succellos\u2019 halo on the front cover of Origins<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mail order versions of Origins<\/em> include a bonus disc, the disc in question boasting four different language versions of the track \u2018The Call Of The Mountains\u2019. \u201cHonestly, that was basically just for fun,\u201d the vocalist admits. \u201cIn Switzerland we have four official languages; Swiss, French, Italian, and Romansch. We had the idea once of recording a song in the four official languages of Switzerland. We had decided that many years ago, and so originally we wanted to do that with a song from Helvetios<\/em> \u2013 our previous album. Back then though, it wasn\u2019t possible to do that just due to the lack of time. During the production process of Origins<\/em>, this idea just came up again. We had enough time, so we said \u2018Okay, fuck it. Let\u2019s do it.\u2019 Actually, it was just for fun, because we thought that it was something cool to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eluveitie will embark on a tour of the United Kingdom during November, the tour scheduled to begin on the 11th at London\u2019s Islington Academy. \u201cWe\u2019re extremely looking forward to that,\u201d Chrigel enthuses. \u201cTo be honest, it\u2019s been a while since we last played the UK. It\u2019s good; we\u2019re super-happy to finally return to the UK. It will be great, I\u2019m pretty sure about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Origins<\/em> was released on August 1st, 2014 in Europe (excluding the United Kingdom), on the 4th in the United Kingdom, and subsequently on the 5th in North America, all via Nuclear Blast Records.<\/p>\n

Interview published in October 2014. All promotional photographs by Manuel Vargas Lepiz.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ELUVEITIE – Carrying The Torch Anthony Morgan October 2014 Eluveitie (l-r): Ivo Henzi, Nicole Ansperger, Rafael Salzmann, Patrick Wistler, Chrigel Glanzmann, Kay Brem, Merlin Sutter and Anna Murphy Songwriting sessions in support of August 2014 studio full-length Origins \u2013 the sixth to be issued by Winterthur, Zurich, Switzerland-based folk \/ death metal outfit Eluveitie \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1490,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eluveitie","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22345"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23475,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22345\/revisions\/23475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}