The PAGAN MUSIC LIST is an attempt to create a comprehensive list of Pagan, Heathen, Esoteric, Animist, and related music that we listen to and love. We include embedded YouTube, Soundcloud, or Bandcamp links when possible for each artist.

Previous collections in this series have been archived here, and new collections of reviews will be posted monthly (supporters get early access to new collections—find out more here).

We also provide a constantly updated index of artists that we have reviewed by name and genre.

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Collection 12: Blackmore’s Night, Eluveitie

Blackmore’s Night

Folk, Pagan Rock

Recommended Album: Ghost of a Rose

Artist Website: https://www.blackmoresnight.com/

There is an entire genre of “pagan” music that I avoid whenever possible. It’s the sugary sort, the kind with ridiculous lyrics and sappy melodies that make you wish you’d never dared called yourself a pagan.

However, there is one band that fits into that genre yet I nevertheless like enough not to cringe when I hear it: Blackmore’s Night. They’re actually quite good, and if anything, the bands I don’t like are all poor copies of this band, anyway.

Blackmore’s Night was started in the late 90’s by Richie Blackmore, a British rocker with a somewhat significant following for his band Rainbow. The story goes that a fan of his, Candice Night (whose last name forms the other half of the band’s title), asked him for an autograph and started talking about renaissance music with him. A few years later, they began performing together.

My favorite song from them is Play Minstrel Play, which they wrote and recorded with Ian Anderson (the lead singer and flutist from Jethro Tull). The lyrics are quite haunting, evoking the Piper of Hameln and also the medieval beliefs about visiting musicians being either fae or hidden messengers from the devil:

Play for me, minstrel, play
And take away our sorrows
Play for me, minstrel, play
And we'll follow
Hear, listen, can you hear,
The haunting melody surrounding you,
Weaving a magic spell all around you

Danger hidden in his eyes,
We should have seen it from far away,
Wearing such a thin disguise in the light of day

Another good song from them is The Circle:

I've watched the mountains rise from dust
Saw the gold return to rust
I had cried when the oceans died
And the circle starts again

I was here when the world began to turn
Kissed the sun as it started to burn
The whispering at the reckoning said
"The circle starts again"

And absolutely their most beautiful song is Ghost of A Rose, a haunting love song.

When all was done, she turned to run
Dancing to the setting sun as he watched her
And ever more he thought he saw
A glimpse of her upon the moors forever
He'd hear her say
"Promise me , when you see, a white rose you'll think of me
I love you so
Never let go
I will be your ghost of a rose

Eluveitie

Pagan/ Folk Metal

Recommended Album: Everything Remains (As It Never Was), Slania, and Origins

Artist Website: http://www.eluveitie.ch/

True story. I’ve been holding back from listing Eluveitie because they are absolutely my favorite band and it felt weird to try to summarize them in a short review. Eventually it had to happen though, as no band’s music is closer to the ethos of my own pagan beliefs than them.

Eluveitie is a Swiss pagan metal band, whose name is an old Etruscan form of Helvetii, the Celtic peoples who lived in the Swiss alps. That link gives you a key to what they’re about, and why their music is so deeply resonant.

Though the band often sings in English, they sometimes—especially on older songs—sing in reconstructed Gallic. Especially in those songs, the lyrics are often taken from old Gallic inscriptions. Take, for instance, the song Brictom, the text of which is an ancient Gallic curse against a Roman official:

Another primary feature of Eluveitie’s music is their use of old Celtic and Germanic folk melodies towards new ends. They are particularly fond of Breton melodies, as for instance the use of a Breton an dro in the song Arcane Dominion:

One of their most famous songs also uses an old Breton melody, this time the melody from Tri Martolod (three sailors). That song is Inis Mona, whose lyrics lament the massacre of druids by Roman soldiers on what is now Anglesy:

As with Inis Mona, a repeated theme in their lyrics is the retelling of historical events related to the Celtic Gauls. One of my favorite songs of theirs, Alesia, recounts the fall of a famous Celtic oppidum where the famous chieftain Vercingetorix made his land stand against Julius Caesar. The singer recounts the moment the Celts sent out the women and children from the besieged city, as was it was traditional amongst the Celts to let non-combatants survive. Caesar, however, trapped them and made the men inside Alesia watch them starve.

Probably the core thread which ties together their music is that of rage at Empire’s destruction of traditional cultures. Especially in their most metal album (and also m favorite), Everything Remains (As It Never Was), this rage takes on a religious depth: the destruction of peoples as seen from the eyes of the gods and ancestors. The song Thousandfold exhibits this rage best:

I, the spectral guise
Evoking these barring fears
Pestering your conscript fathers
I smile at my demise and while I die
I cherish the roots of my perseverance

And no discussion of the band would be complete without mentioning their most popular song, The Call of the Mountains. Its lyrics evoke the spirit of the Helvetii, a people so resilient against Roman rule that they are one of the few whose name remains in the present day (as the official name of Switzerland, the Confoederatio Helvetica and its medieval names, the Republica Helvetiorum). Originally sung in English, the song has been re-released in all four official languages of Switzerland (Italian, French, German, and Romansch).

Against the waves, with our swords in our hands
Against the sea, with our backs to the walls
Against distress, in the presence of our enemies
Against the storms, roaring at our faces

A cry rang out throughout the skies
A beckon, the flight of the cranes

The call of the mountains

The Pagan Music List 12: Blackmore's Night, Eluveitie