Eluveitie - Helvetios

I have a very love/hate relationship with the Eluveitie.  First of all, I find the name annoying to type because I always forget if it's e-i or i-e in the middle, but I double checked it this time (just for you).  Definitely e-i.  Secondly, because they're completely, utterly awesome, but sometimes they're not.

The complete truth is I generally don't like female singers in metal.

1) Bands that are fronted by a female are often lost in her stardom, everything ends up being about her instead of the band as a whole.
2) Female fronted bands tend to fall into two categories: whiny or too operatic.  
3) clean vocals, and they're almost always clean vocals when it's a girl, really aren't what I'm usually looking for when I'm listened to metal.

That said, sometimes they're exactly what I'm looking for and I'll listen to the same song over and over.  If you like them I won't hate on you for it!

I'm sure you can sympathize with the feeling.

ANYWAY...

On February 10th Eluveitie is releasing a new album entitled, Helvetios.  Already, through the magic of youtube I've been able to hear two of the songs, A Rose For Epona and Meet the Enemy.  Here's the music video for A Rose for Epona so you can form your own opinion:

 Eluveitie uses a mix of both male and female vocals which keeps their albums unique and interesting.  Some of their songs are sung in there entirety by the female vocalists and some by the male.  In keeping with my general preferences...I usually like the songs with the male singer, songs like Inis Mona and Thousandfold.  In A Rose for Epona they succeed in using both vocalists and create an enticing collage of male and female vocals that escalates the end.

What I really love about Eluveitie and what keeps me coming back for every album they produce is the use of historical instruments.  I'm a total sucker for strange and interesting instrumentation.  How many bands do you know that have a permanent hurdy-gurdy playing member?  Some folk metal bands get lost in the folk part, but Eluveitie really seems to provide a consistent mix of metal and folk.

I'm really looking forward to hearing the rest of the album!