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Eluveitie are a Folk Metal band with a stock of wind and string instruments gracing their music. Most of them are Gaelic or Celtic in origin, and a couple of them are not familiar to me. This band seems to me to function better in the folk area rather than the metal area.

The instruments exploited really help to pronounce the Celtic theme. You can make a riff sound pretty Irish with fiddle, but when you have the aid of the distinct timbre of Irish bagpipe and tin whistle you can start summoning leprechauns.

With their continual presence and large role in the music, these instruments make for music that can be identified as folk before metal. There is a lot of atmosphere here as well, so this album displays a palette of moods.

The songs keep to a basic structure and rely on textures more than musicianship. Intricate writing is not necessary to make you tap your foot and nod your head to nearly every song.

My gripes would be that the production is a bit sterile, the vocals are generic and when they do put the "metal" into overdrive it's got a large tint of melodic Death Metal on it. But overall, it's worth investigating if you're looking for really authentic sounding Celtic metal.