A Grove of Ashes and Aspens

Now Playing: To Oak Woods Bestowed by Elvenking

I’ve talked about Elvenking multiple times before, and rightfully so. They’re a pagan metal band with a sizable audience, I’m both a pagan and a metalhead, it 🤌🏻just makes sense 🤌🏻. So, I figured that taking a look at where it all started would be a fun little look at how far the band has come, especially since this year is the 25 year anniversary of their debut album, and next year is the 30 year anniversary of the band as a whole.

So as a quick refresher of who Elvenking is currently, they are Damna/Damnagoras (Davide Moras) on vocals, Aydan (Federico Baston) and Headmatt (Mattia Carli) on guitars, Jakob (Alessandro Jacobi) on bass, Symohn (Simone Morettin) on drums, and Lethien (Fabio Polo) on violin. However, Heathenreel was recorded with the band’s original lineup and a session violinist, long before Jakob, Symohn, Lethien, and Headmatt joined. So, at the time, alongside Damna and Aydan, they had Jarpen (Mattia Carniel) on guitar, Gorlan on bass, and Zender on drums. They didn’t have a permanent violinist at the time, though they would have Paolo Polesel fill in as a session musician on fiddle and viola for the duration of the album. Their original long term violinist, Elyghen (Javier Arteta), would not join the band until the following year after Heathenreel’s release.

I went a bit back and forth on doing this, since last time I did a retrospective album review, it was for a band that has since split up, and these guys are still going strong. Obviously, I ultimately decided to do it as a little 25 year anniversary type thing. So, let’s get into it.

To Oak Woods Bestowed is the opening track of the album, providing a hint at something the band would try twice more after this, once in 2014, and again in 2019, to moderate success. It is an instrumental track, and it sets up the introduction to the album, and the band overall, quite nicely, with intertwined flute and violin lines. It actually occasionally comes out at live shows, coming out whenever they play the next track, as it leads into the track quite nicely.

Pagan Purity is probably one of my top “opening” tracks of an album. (It’s not a full opening track, since To Oak Woods Bestowed exists, but you get what I mean.) It’s fun, it’s driving, it’s heavy, it’s a little bit silly, what more could you want from some folky power metal bullshit? It’s a fun pagan anthem, and one that I will happily blast at full volume to bother all of my neighbours. It really feels indicative of the early days of the band, in a time when they were all young adults with not much else to do, and it feels just like a bunch of guys enjoying life and nature. There are also some fun little acoustic hits highlighting the electric elements throughout, which is a characteristic they keep elements of even now in their more recent albums.

The Dweller of Rhymes has a very interesting start, with a storm effect and then panned guitars giving a slightly off-balance feel before dragging the listener right back into the middle. It also has the compound vs simple duality that we also see in some later songs (Season of the Owl, anyone?) between the verses and the pre-chorus/chorus. It manages to strike a balance between the light, playful feel of compound time and the slightly heavier feel of simple time, giving a sort of tugging between two worlds type of vibe. It’s a very fun song and I love it.

The Regality Dance is one of those tracks of theirs that feels kinda like a shitpost. It is a primarily acoustic track for the first like minute and a bit, before getting into a heavier electric sound. It has the balance of fun and silliness, combined with the lyrics, to give a sense of just being a bunch of guys having fun and just kinda dicking around a bit, and I’m here for it. I’ve joked that I’m going to put this song on my wedding playlist, purely for the “Bienvenu / Mesdames et Messieurs / To the Danse Païen / Please come in and hurry up or / You will miss your turn” bit and how hilarious it would be, especially given that much of my family is Christian and I am very much a pagan. The little acoustic ending feels like a cheeky little “yeah, we just did that” and I love it so much.

White Willow is six straight minutes of just pure pagan fun. It’s driving from the start, with soaring melodies and almost feeling a bit of that Tolkien inspiration in their earlier works starting to creep in. It layers Damna’s clean vocals over Jarpen’s harsh vocals at points, blending them and bringing a new dimension to the lyrics. As the solo hits, it heralds a more significant piece of the story, one which would, in part, come back 13 years later, in King of the Elves. That compound section is my favourite part of the entire song. It’s such a powerful moment of storytelling, with the idea of a new start without forgetting one’s roots, which makes it even better that it came back later.

So this is the original version of Skywards. There would be a later version in 2008 without Jarpen’s extra vocals at the end, but they are otherwise basically identical. It is a very light, yet very soft acoustic ballad, a style which would come back from time to time in future albums. (See A Cloak of Dusk and Disillusion’s Reel as examples.) It serves as a bit of a palate cleanser and a lighter moment, a break in the action, if you will. I love the entire track, with how soft it is. (I have been known to like my folk metal ballads, after all.)

Oakenshield, the most overt Tolkien reference in their music and the song that gave me my drag name. It has the fun folky elements right from the start, keeping a fun acoustic intro before backing off into an acoustic guitar and violin line for the start of the lead vocal line. It keeps the light, bouncing rhythm throughout, hinting at the lightness of the compound times they seem to favour. It is a very direct reference to Thorin Oakenshield from The Lord of the Rings, and I think that’s really fun. It brings out an aspect of metal culture that a lot of non-metalheads don’t really think about, that being the fact that most of us are massive nerds. So many of us read fantasy novels or play Magic the Gathering or both (I’ll let you guess which I do), to the point where power metal as a specific sub-genre is partially defined by how nerdy it gets. So yes, this is basically Autism: The Song in the Elvenking discography, and I’m very here for it. I should go back and read those books again…

Hobs ‘N Feathers is another one of those shitpost tracks. It feels like some fun little story you’d hear from some guy in a tavern or in a fantasy jail when you ask why he’s there. It’s just one of those little fun songs that feels like it was written in the innocence of youth. There are still remnants of this sound in their current music, and it’s always so nice to see, seeing how even when some things change so much, others stay the same.

Conjuring of the 14th is probably the most morbid story on this album, concerning a group going to a cursed collection of houses and dying afterwards from a series of unfortunate accidents. It’s one of those songs that gives an unsettling sense that something’s not quite right in the story, and it makes me wonder if there’s something else going on in the story that Aydan didn’t have the space to include. (Note to self: ask about that, I really wanna know.) I love this song so much, it’s so unsettling musically in a way that just kinda works. I kinda want to learn the bassline for this as well. A strange story and weird music is probably the best way to get me to want to learn something.

A Dreadful Strain is one of those tracks I keep forgetting about until it comes on, and it’s not even because it’s forgettable. It’s a very fun and very memorable song, I just find myself forgetting about it for some reason. It’s another song with a fun bassline I want to learn, and it gives us some of those early Damna vocals and some early instances of him adding a fun little edge into his voice. This also has a bit more of that distinct compound feel in the melodic instruments, and the drumline is absolutely wack. I may have to try and do a more proper musical breakdown at some point, because that would be really fun to see if I can try.

Ok, so now we’re at Seasonspeech. This song is one that I had to warm up to a little bit, with how chaotic the vocals are, but it’s so much fun. It’s the longest track on the album, at 7:39, and I love it all. It starts with a violin intro, before echoing the melody in the guitars and going to acoustic right before the vocals come in. The entire song serves as a bit of a dialogue between the four seasons, with Damna as the Voice of Fall, Jarpen as Wintersoul, Pauline Tracey as Summerplunge, and Laura de Luca as the Spirit of Spring. The song plays around with how the lead vocal lines are panned, sometimes panning them hard left or hard right, sometimes having them straight down the middle, and blending them with the other lines to weave a complicated story. It gives all four vocalists the chance to show off their skills, all while giving some delicious harmonies in the vocals and the instrumentals. Another aspect of this song that I absolutely love is the slower, more ballad-like section in the middle. (Side note: the one live recording of this song that I’ve found was recorded in 2015 for the Night of Nights live show, and it has Jakob doing the harmony line in this section and that shit gives me life.) The entire song is just so well done, and the intentional chaos is very well balanced. The ending is also very cool, because it has a little vocal line introduced in the beginning of the track looping as the instruments fall away and Damna gives soaring vocal lines of his own over the top, and it really goes to show exactly how much vocal power he has.

This album is truly indicative of the sound of folk/power metal of the time, and the fact that they’re including a lot of that sound in some of their newer stuff as well (hi, The Past Is Forever) is so nice to see. I’m really excited for the new EP to come out in a little over a month and see where else they’re going with this.