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In-person interview with Chrisgel Glanzmann of Eluveitie

April 8th 2010, House of Blues, Hollywood CA

Andrew: The album 'Everything Remains As It Never Was' released in March. It's going great so far. What are your thoughts on it?
Chrisgel: It sure is the most metal album we ever did so far. When we played here last time [November 21st 2009] we were done recording it so we already knew what it would be like. Personally I think, we've kind of managed to develop both aspects of our music, the folk side and the metal side but I think both aspects are functioning better together on this album and each of them have been able to come out stronger. I think it's also probably the most melancholic or the harshest album we did so far.

Andrew: Are you playing any of the new songs on this tour?
Chrisgel: Yeah we'll play a couple of those songs tonight. Last year we just played one song from that. Actually there is one song we will play for the very first time tonight. We've never played it before. We're still not sure if we're going to play it (laughs). In the last couple of hours we were just rehearsing. We will see (laughs).

Andrew: The last venue you played at here in LA was [Ultra Violet Social Club] had such a small stage that you were hardly even able to get all your members to fit on it! You must be happier playing here at the House of Blues?
Chrisgel: Yeah! Actually we don't often play such small stages. But we hadn't heard about that club. It was obviously kind of a new club. Basically that's what our booking agent was told. Well we made it work in the end but it's of course always better when you are able to move around a little bit, you know. To be honest, they [previous venue] did not do a good job at all. But after all, we manage to play whatever the stage is like. When we arrived there, there was nothing. No PA, nothing and we were like 'Wow, what the fuck is going on?' (laughs).

Andrew: On the last tour you told me that you couldn't play the acoustic stuff because of the small stages. Are you going to try playing them this time around?
Chrisgel: Actually we did play some acoustic songs on each night of that tour except for the LA show. As I said, there was no PA and they arranged everything just like at the last minute. The PA they got in the end was actually too small. It didn't have enough channels for all the acoustic instruments so we had to skip the acoustic songs. But on this tour actually we really want to focus on the new album and on the metal stuff because it's a metal tour.

Andrew: Have you heard of the 70,000 tons of metal cruise?
Chrisgel: Yeah, a couple of friends of ours are playing in it. The guys in Finntroll told us about it. It's a funny idea so yeah why not! I'm sure it'll be fun.

Andrew: What's happening with 'Evocation 2'? Are you going to record that any time soon?
Chrisgel: We will record it for sure, but not soon. Actually just two months ago, we decided to not go with Evocation 2 as the next album. We were talking about what we should do as the next one. Then we just decided that we want to give the acoustic thing some more time to really develop. So the next album will be a metal album again and probably after that one we'll start working on Evocation part 2.

Andrew: Do you think the Amon Amarth fans are a better fit for your music than fans of bands like Belphegor on the previous tour?
Chrisgel: Personally I liked the package of that tour even though it was kind of mixed. Even the third band that joined on this tour [Holy Grail] plays 80s heavy metal. They're cool and played with us last night. We had never heard of them before. So again this package is quite mixed so nothing wrong with that!