Band:	Eluveitie
Album:	Slania
Style:	Celtic folk metal, Gothenburg metal
Release date:	February 15, 2008
A review by:	Baz Anderson

Disc I
01. Samon
02. Primordial Breath
03. Inis Mona
04. Grey Sublime Archon
05. Anagantios
06. Bloodstained Ground
07. The Somber Lay
08. Slanias Song
09. Giamonios
10. Tarvos
11. Calling The Rain
12. Elembivos
13. Samon [acoustic version] [bonus]

Disc II [Limited Edition DVD: Ragnarök Festival 2007]
01. Andro
02. Your Gaulish war
03. Song Of Life
04. Lament
+ Inis Mona [video]
+ Photogallery

Hail the new wave of folk metal with Eluveitie as one of the bands spearheading this charging attack on the world of metal. "Slania" brings the second of the band's full-length albums in strong but typical form as another album is added to the ever-growing pool of folk-influenced bands. Eluveitie set their sound up with plenty of layers of real folk instruments that intertwine with the metal, which adds a very pleasant and often beautiful mood to parts of the album but also compliments the heavy metal core of the album. In-between onslaughts of folkish instruments the backbone of the album seems to be heavily influenced and similar to many of the Göthenburg-sound melodic death metal bands around today.

Eluveitie seem to have everything you would want to be looking out for in a band of this style. As well as the folk-laced extreme Göthenburg sounding sides we have moments like the delightful instrumental track "Anagantios" which leads into one of the highlights of the albums in the In Flames reminiscent "Bloodstained Ground" providing pounding metal with strong folk elements woven amidst the crushing metal. Title track, as-it-were, "Slanias Song" also introduces female vocals which work splendidly giving the album yet more diversity that sometimes eludes other bands in the scene. "Slania" taken how it is, is a very enjoyable album offering plenty of standpoints from where you can stand to listen to it. The album is far from monotonous and it would seem each track attempts to bring something slightly different to the picture, albeit still all with a strong smack of Göthenburg death metal.

However folk metal is far from being a new thing in metal, although with the last few years the popularity of the genre has risen and shot through the roof which has in-turn caused the creation of seemingly masses of bands jumping on the originally unique sounding little subgenre and turned "folk metal" into one of the staples of metal these days. Yes, Eluveitie sound very talented in putting together opuses of grand folk metal as well as performing it but at times the, quite frankly bone dry and overused Göthenburg melodic death metal guitar riffs come into the picture and you are left in somewhat of an ambivalent state as "Slania" is both refreshingly original with the folk instruments and arrangements, but also nauseatingly predictable when it comes to the Soilwork and In Flames sounding guitar riffs chugging the music along. It would just be a shame for the original elements to be lost as time goes by and this "folk metal" becomes the next ignoreable, mass of mediocrity that becomes widely popular among metallers.

As with Eluveitie, "Slania" is a superb album of many dimensions and elements that are brought to shining life with the inclusion of all these folk instruments. The bland Göthenburg riffs included in the album can mostly be forgotten about but may rise to be a cause for concern in the future. Fans of this genre should definitely pay some attention to this album, everything you could ask for is in there somewhere, the album emits energy from start to finish and stays constantly busy in one way or another, this will surely please many camps in the metal world.