Eluveitie: ‘In the End, It’s All F—ing Rock ‘n’ Roll’

Pagan metal, schmagan metal. So says Eluveitie singer/bagpiper/mandolinist/whistler Chrigel. "Well, probably we don't like it that much," Chrigel told Noisecreep about the band's categorization as pagan metal, a flourishing subgenre in the metal scene. "But to be honest, we really don't care what the music is labeled. In the end, it's just f---ing rock 'n' roll. That's your job more than ours, to label it, so we don't care!" Touché.

While pagan metal -- essentially melodic death metal with a taste for folk elements and string instruments -- is catching fire in the scene, Eluveitie aren't hopping on any trends. "Our music is today what it was supposed to be since day one," Chrigel said. "When I formed this band almost eight years ago, it was just a realization of a dream I had back then, which was to combine two kinds of music that I personally love, which would be melodic death metal and traditional Celtic folk music. So that's what it was about then and is about now."

While non-musician's might not be able to take that leap of faith -- that distinct folk and death metal will mesh well together -- Chrigel maintains that "it's always a matter of taste, I guess, but to me, it doesn't feel contrary at all. I've been playing both and listening to both for so long that I cannot count the years now. It feels like it belongs together and when writing music, it's not hard to combine it. It grows together like belongs together. In fact, it is closer than it might seem on the surface. If you look at how a mandolin is played in traditional Celtic folk music and compare it to a lead guitar in modern melodic death metal, it is quite close."

Eluveitie's 'Everything Remains as It Never Was' is out now via Nuclear Blast.