Eluveitie – Ànv

Eluveitie – Ànv
Release Date:
25th April 2025
Label: Nuclear Blast
Order/Stream
Genre:
Folk Metal
FFO: Haggard, Tyr, Ensiferum. 
Review By: Ross Bowie

Eluveitie are back with their signature brand of folk metal. This is the NINTH studio album and despite the band’s former members section being longer than War And Peace, they have managed to keep a clear identity and sound across their vast twenty-one-year career. 

Eluveitie have been at the forefront of what was once metal’s most exciting genre, blending folk music with furious metal and doing so to an extremely high standard, especially across their run from the end of the naughties through to the mid 2010s. While their line-up only contains one original member, their mission statement has always remained the same: right mammoth choruses alongside fast technical riffs and wack on as many instruments as you care to mention to make the experience that bit more evocative. Ànv is the latest offering which doesn’t do a lot to stray from the band’s previous formula but still offers a good folky fix.

You’ll know by this point if you’re into this band or not, but if you have pressed play hoping to hear frontman Chrigel Glanzmann yell with his full check while Fabienne Erni effortlessly cranks out soaring melodies, then you’re in luck. Taraonias wastes no time in roaring out the speakers with thundering drums and fast-paced melo-death style riffs, before the violins kick in, offering luscious melodies across the verses. The chorus is huge with both vocalists playing off each other with a crystal-clear production letting you pick out every individual detail. The chorus is so good. In fact, the band all but use it again on the following track, The Prodigal Ones. Title track, Ànv, opens with a brooding sense of dread and as a chorus of voices swell and Erni takes centre stage, showing off her true star power.

However, Ànv’s main issue is that everything the band do feels very familiar and often predictable. The band has a formula and very strictly sticks to it. When the band has so many talented musicians and a whole orchestra’s worth of instruments at their disposal, it can feel quite disappointing not to see them push the boat out far enough. It wouldn’t be fair to compare a band nine albums into their career to their best work, but at sixteen tracks long, it’s hard not to be left longing for some variation or some more risks along the road. While career-high moments like A Rose For Epona, The Call Of The Mountains and Omnos were elevated by the always incredible Anna Murphy the band have proved in the past that Erni is more than capable of sitting in that sphere with a track like Ambiramus, but nothing across the 16 tracks gets close to that high. That’s not to say that the album is bland, but Eluveitie have shown even recently that they’re capable of more. 

Eluveitie have been at the forefront of folk metal for approaching two decades, and have a greatest hits that will go toe to toe with any band you want to put on a festival main stage, but there aren’t many songs on this album that will be displacing fan favourites in years to come. If you’re looking for your folk metal fix, then you will likely enjoy this album like I did. Enjoy the highlights and then stick on Innis Mona and remember what this band firing on all cylinders sounds like. 

3 out of 5 stars (3 / 5)

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