Origins Commentary Transcription - audio available on Spotify

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrigel    According to the Celtic Druids teachings the Celts are decedents of a mysterious underworldly god.  Yet, the name of this god remains a mystery until today. 

 

Anna    The Nameless is one of my favorite songs on the album.  For me, personally this was the hardest song ever to record because of the arpeggios that I do on the hurdy gurdy they are just really fucking fast.  And I am actually still not quite comfortable playing that part so I’m gonna sweat my ass off live but it’s also a really great challenge.

Merlin: Very powerful song in my opinion, one of the first demos I received and throughout songwriting and production it remained one of my favorites.  I like the darkness of it and thanks to the blast beat in the beginning of the album and probably of the live set for quite some time to come it’s bound to keep me in shape as well.  

Anna I’m not one of those musicians who wants to do scales or shit like that, and I don’t need to because Eluveitie um.. already does that for me with the songwriting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrigel    The Celts define the passage of time by nights rather than days, in their opinion everything came from darkness.  The days come from the nights as much as the flower comes from the dark soil and blossoms. 

 

Anna    From Darkness was the first song that was written for the album and we were already playing it live before we went to the studio.  It’s a song that features Nicole’s violin skills very well.  The solo which you hear in this song is actually a traditional - it’s not in the original key though, so, Chrigel just kind of adjusted it to the key of the song and actually Nicole was asking her former violin teacher what she thinks of it and she basically said it’s pretty much impossible to play because it’s so difficult so Nicole did a pretty good job I think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrigel    Celtos tells a different version of the Druidical teaching according to which the Celts were descendants or are descendants from an underworldly god.

 

Anna    In Celtos I tried to do some softer singing rather than sounding like a ‘pop siren’ we wanted it to be more authentic, Gaulish-girl sounding and I think it turned out really well and it has this really special vocal arrangement which is actually going to be really tricky live because we were rehearsing it now for the first time, and it’s really weird to just sing and then just stop singing in mid-sentence so we were always kind of fucking up and singing in parts we were not supposed to sing and yeah, Chrigel and I are going to have some quite like some ‘brainfuck’ moments when we’re playing this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrigel    This song tells the foundation legend of a Gaulish city named Virunum.  The city was located in today’s Austria near Magdalensberg. 

 

Merlin    On the second to last day of drum tracking,  Murphy’s law struck as it always does during album recordings.  I had to visit the doctor, who proceeded to cut some sort of cyst right out of my forehead.  Immediately afterwards, I proceeded to Tommy’s studio, high on pain medication and with a bunch of fresh bleeding stitches on my head.  So, that makes Virunus one of two tracks I literally bled and suffered for in the studio. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anna    Call of the Mountains has lyrics that I can really relate to because to put it simply I love mountains.  I go hiking a lot, it’s in my free time- it makes me feel really good. 

 

Chrigel    Where the Celts came from originally remains a mystery until today.  But there are some historical records that tell us they were living on some Northern European coastal areas.  Wandering south, looking for a final place to settle they came to the area of today’s Alps.  This is what The Call of the Mountains is dealing with.

 

Anna    This is the first song where I sing in a very low register in the beginning, and first I thought, yeah it might not sound very good because if you sing low you have to put a lot of character into your voice - because otherwise it’s not going to sound very spectacular.  And when I sent the first demo of the vocals everybody thought it was really awesome.  So, that’s pretty cool I think I’m gonna start not singing so high for the next albums. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ivo  Sucellos was one of my first songs I wrote for this album.  Yeah, long ago, Chrigel and I were talking about a cool guitar intro which we can do live as well and do a really cooler live show with this part and yeah, that’s the intro of Sucellos, the idea behind the intro of Sucellos.

 

Chrigel    As the title says, the song is dealing with the Gaulish god Sucellos.  As I said earlier, it remains a mystery of what god the Celts claimed to be decedents of.  But probably, it was exactly Sucellos.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ivo    Inception is one of our harder songs on this new album.  It consists of two parts.  The first part is the wild, typical Eluveitie metal part and the second part consists of an epic choir and a large blast beat and shredding guitars and yeah, I really like the fact that the song consists of two parts like night and day.

 

Merlin    Even though I suffer badly during the blast beat part in the end, this is one of the most interesting and powerful songs on the album. 

 

Chrigel    A rather complex lyrical concept actually, but in short words Inception deals with eternal loss of ---------- and the immortality of the human soul.

 

Merlin    The arrangement is a rather unusual one for us and I very much like the development from the first to the very distinct second part of the song.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anna    Ivo sent the first draft of Vianna to me, and I did some of the folk parts.  The melody that you hear in the chorus and in the beginning are parts that I wrote and originally there were some vocal melodies written already but no lyrics.  And when I was recording and I was just looking around the room, and in my apartment there’s tons of like movie posters, with quotes from movies and well, just stuff written.  And I was just singing random movie quotes to just kind of get a demo.

 

Chrigel    This song tells a beautiful and also rather dark story of a young Gaulish girl.  Well, in short words afterall, it’s another foundation myth of the Gaulish city called Vianna which actually still exists today about 20k out of Leon. 

 

Anna    I eventually got the proper lyrics from Chrigel when we were already in the studio so it was very spontaneous but I think that’s what sounds pretty cool in the song.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ivo    The Silver Sister is one of our more complicated songs on this album.  I started this song with the metal part at the beginning and for a long time I didn’t know what to do with this song, I had no idea what kind of song, what kind of feeling it will become, and yeah, Chrigel had a great idea of making an epic song and yeah, I really think it turned out well.

 

Chrigel    According to the ancient historian Strabo, the Southern European Celts had a pretty mystical custom related to the full moon and as well related to this mysterious, Nameless god we were talking about earlier.  Well it would go too far to explain all that (see video below) but, well in short words this is  what The Silver Sister is dealing with. 

 

Ivo    Silver sister is a song you have to listen a few times to understand it but I think it’s really worth to…*laughter*  Fuck… it’s worth listening to it because you fucking paid for it. *more laughter*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrigel    As the title suggests the song tells about a King.  It tells about a pretty important and impressive character in Gaulish history.  The story of the High king of the Bituriges,  Ambicatus.

 

Anna    King was the only song that I recorded with my new electric hurdy gurdy.  Tommy, our producer, he put a really cool effect on it.  I actually really enjoy playing around with effects on the hurdy gurdy.  We haven’t really done it since Gray Sublime Archon where there’s a wa-wa on the hurdy.  And it’s really fun to do this live as well.  

 

Merlin    King is one of the songs where I hadn’t heard the complete song when I began tracking the drums.  As the most surprising and the most positive…..(con’t)

 

Ivo    I think it’s one of my favorite songs on this album because it has so many typical Eluveitie parts in it.  It has like the epic choruses, it has cool metal parts, and it has the dance-ey fast folk and I really think it combines all these things together to a typical cool Eluveitie track.

 

Anna    On King I also recorded for the first time using a new screaming technique.  I visited Melissa Cross about two years ago and she taught me a different technique from the one I was using.  And so King is the first song where I am trying her technique and I think it sounds pretty good.

 

Merlin    ….As the most surprising and the most positive development in the production of Origins.  It developed from this kind of uncertain demo into one of my favorite Eluveitie tracks ever and my absolute favorite song to play live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrigel    In ancient literary testimonies there are partly different versions of some origin myths of the Celts.  The Day of Strife tells another version of the same story Celtos was dealing with. 

 

Anna    In the beginning of the song you can hear like this kind of chant which was recorded by some fans of ours who won a competition and the funny thing is I always understand “Gimmie Tortillas” in the first sentence but, yeah, obviously that’s not what it means.  The tune that you can hear in the end of the song and that it’s kind of on repeat – that is probably one of my favorite Eluveitie tunes.  I think it’s really awesome and I could listen to that part all day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ivo    Fun fact about Carry the Torch is that it’s a song which I wrote about 3 years ago.  The fun thing is that it was not meant to be for Eluveitie.

 

Chrigel    This song kind of continues the story of King.  When the high king of the Bituriges,  Ambicatus got old, two of his nephews - Bellovesus  and Segovesus carried on his legacy and this is what Carry the torch is dealing with.

 

Merlin    As with a few other tracks I had only heard about 50% of the instrumentation when I began tracking and no vocals at all.  That made for a completely different experience during recording and I think it’s part of what gives this song a very special character.  It’s one of the most unusual Eluveitie tracks for me but one of my favorites too. 

 

Anna    We had a really spontaneous idea in the studio which was for me to do some singing in the chorus. The only problem was we didn’t have any lyrics so Chrigel actually wrote the lyrics for that song in like five minutes and then he just came running into the booth and gave me a piece of paper with Gaulish lyrics on it. I’m like Oh..ok.. well awesome then, let’s go!

 

Ivo    Yeah, after some time I forgot about this song and then just recently when we were writing songs for the new album it just came to my mind that I had this song, that it would fit pretty well on this album and Yeah, that is a fun fact of Carry the Torch. 

 

Anna    You can hear how our new guitarist Rafi well.. he’s not that new but it’s the first album he has recorded with us and he’s really featured here with his guitar solo and he brings a very special sound into Eluveitie.  You can kind of hear that he doesn’t come from metal which I personally think is really cool.  It adds a kind of new vibe and I like that.