Celtachor
Nine Waves from the Shore

Irish celtic heroes of Celtachor are back, now with their debut album which happens a few waves from the shoreline. A story about the gaelic landings with heroes and gods, adventure and what have you, a fascinating story for this album. The cover painting is quite nice and the cover looks good, clearly that thing is a step up from the demo which I reviewed a few years back. It was a good demo but it lacked some things that I would have liked to hear, but for sure that is the band’s decision what they would like to express. So what has happened now for this album? have they evolved? or are they stuck where they were?

The answer is that it is a little of each, they have evolved but at the same time they are stuck in the same style as they were. The music is extreme metal that is laden with celtic whistles and such, it has a folkish feel and thanks to those classical touches which are mostly done by using melodies through whistles it also gets a fair bit of dynamics to their sound. The vocals are still quite one-dimensional though with it being only growls rather than a more varied style of sining like with clean vocals or even a female part here and there, but none of that is there. The production is good enough to bring out the songs, it could have been better but it works rather well I would have to say and all in all there isn’t much to complain about when it comes to these guys on the production side, they clearly have an idea about what they are doing.

And they are fairly good at what they are doing as well which of course is always a good thing for a band that wants to raise interest from listeners. The more dynamic sound is clearly a step forward for the band, as is the production and as an overall release it is a bit better than what they released last time around. I think that the opening track well illustrates this more dynamic sound with the whistles creating a great atmosphere and dynamics when it interacts with the extreme metal base of the song. This is true for all the seven songs on this album but in none of the cases it is as good as it is in this opening track. All the seven songs on the album are good and the fifty minutes it plays for works well enough, the songs are generally quite long but they are also quite dynamic which makes the plus-ten minute songs quite good and the fact that more than half of the songs is over six minutes isn’t that much of a problem thanks to the great dynamics of this album.

There are some minor things I want to bring out though, the vocals can be better. The growls are not bad but the album would have been so much better with a more dynamic way of singing with clean vocals added to create a more dynamic feel to the songs and vocals. I even think that they could have had some female vocals just to spice it up even more. Then there is the production, it is not bad either but it is the same story with it, it could have added a lot with a bit more polished production as the sound is a tad too rough for my taste at the moment.

In the end though none of my small niggles does really detract from the fact that this is a good album which is well worth looking into for anyone who like folk or pagan metal. I think that anyone who like Cruachan should like this, haven’t heard Cruachan? If you like pagan metal with a bit of a rough edge I am quite sure that you will find this album interesting. I think that Cruachan is a pretty good band that has potential to be even better and you would not be wrong to have a look at what they have done so far. A fairly good album is my final word on this one.

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