The folk metal titans Eluveitie are back with their latest offering, ‘Origins‘, with the album title deriving from the self-described ‘going back to the musical roots’ album. Supposing that means Eluveitie’s music will go back to the vein of the first two releases ‘Ven‘ and ‘Slania‘, but quite frankly not a whole lot has changed musically with Eluveitie since the very beginning. They still play a consistent stream of melodic death metal with virtuostic folk melodies underlaying the rhythms, but with their last effort, ‘Helvetios‘, it started to look like the folk metal masters were going stale.

There is a worry that ‘Origins‘ could be the same. ‘Helvetios‘ signified that the band were starting to run out of ideas, with no particular structured songwriting, just a lot of thrash with a lot of folk instuments twiddling along almost ungracefully to the rhythm. The opening track of ‘The Nameless‘ has put those fears to rest, Eluveitie’s strong songwriting has returned. The album blasts into that gothenburg melodic death metal riffing we all know with the folk instruments really providing that celtic atmosphere.

This time round Eluveitie have really used their instruments to their strengths instead of throwing them on top of ready-made-death-riffs, such as use of the mandola in the intro ‘From Darkness‘ to kick off a thrashy folk party, and the use of the pipes in ‘Call of the Mountains‘ to create a catchy hook.

The band have added a couple elements to make ‘Origins‘ fresh, making more extensive use of atmospheric keyboards with resonating choir sounds to add to the music. With so many instruments in the band there is always that danger of too many cooks in the kitchen, but it really strengthens the tracks. The shared vocals of Chigrel Glanzmann and Anna Murphy provide a nice array of track diversity and again play to their own vocal strengths on each of the tracks. At times mid-album there is a feeling that the band have thown in the ‘Helvetios‘ filler track such as ‘Sucellos‘, but it is all generally redeemed by the fact that Eluveitie have really made a strong album here with a lot of thought and heart into how the music is going to work.

‘Origins‘ is definitely Eluveitie‘s best effort since ‘Slania‘, and we can go as far to say that it might even surpass the firepower of the latter album. It’s what makes Eluveitie great, party-starter folk metal with vast displays of instrumental expertise.