- Label: In the Morningside Records.
- Year: 2009.
- Style: Heathen Folk.
- Format: CD.
- Note:
- Score: 73%
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ELIWAGAR is something as rare as a one-woman pagan folk music project. And seriously, she plays the pants of most of the men in the same genre.
The lady who stands responsible for this project is Runahild, a devoted nature lover and practicing pagan, with a huge interest in past times and old time traditions. This is constantly reflected in her music, which is basically a mirror of the music her ancestors used to play down in Lothringen, a fine kind of folk music consisting of flutes, bodhran, tambourine, concertina, mouth harp and horns. To spice things up just a little, ELIWAGAR’s included some soothing keyboard passages which does not nudge the traditionalness in her traditional folk music very much.
With these instruments and lots of singing about wars, ancestors and forests, a total of 16 tracks were recorded and put on this, which I’ve come to believe is ELIWAGAR’s second, album. Now, we’ve occurred the album’s first flaw; 16 tracks are like 6 too many for me to handle. The music is good, unique and very original to todays ears, but it’s not very diverse. We get the same lines, same melodies and same chants over and over again which is how it should be, but after half an hour, I feel a little dizzy actually. Of course, this is not a big problem; no one is forcing me to listen to the entire album in one take.
Another thing I came to think about already during my premiere listening was, or is, that all the best tracks are put first. The intro is not very interesting, but the second, the third and the fourth tracks are, while the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth ain’t. Near the end, there we get a couple of great song again.
BUT, in the whole, this is a strong album. Strong in sound, in production and super strong in its pagan spirit. Something to discover for sure, if you’re into archaic tunes and heathen romanticism.
Tracklist:
- Northern Wind
- Runic Stone
- Myth From The Mountains
- From The Deepest Darkness Rises The Strongest Light
- Tales From A Forgotten Folk
- Sacred Mead From The Pagan Mountains
- When Victorious They Rode The Seas
- Berkana
- And The Ancestral Flame Shall Never Fade
- Battle Song
- Horns Raised On Glorious Nights
- Vogesen
- Invocations Of Tyr And Odin At The Dawn Of War
- The Thousand Swords Of The Sunwheel
- Tiwas Carved On Shields
- Autumn Equinox
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