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Wyldwood Radio

The Home of Pagan Music

An Interview with Chrigel of Eluveitie

What an interview to kick off with on Wyldwood Radio, the mighty, the magnificent and the proudly Celtic Eluveitie!

Taking time out from the European tour, Chrigel sits down to answer some of our questions.

Wyldwood: You seem to draw most influence from the Celtic culture, what is the reason behind it?

Chrigel: Well, we’re Swiss, I’d say. I just got kinda fascinated by the culture and history of Switzerland’s ancient inhabitants, the Celts. The Helvetians were one of the largest and most influential tribes in Gaul (the Celtic part of ancient Europe). Well, and this is what we’re focusing on lyrically and conceptually – the history of the Helvetians and the Gauls in general.

Wyldwood: You all seem to be from very different musical back­grounds, what brought you together to form the band?

Chrigel: That would be the love to music and playing itself, I guess. We do have quite different musical backgrounds, granted. But we share the love for our own music, as well as for our, sometimes a little unusual instruments.

Wyldwood: We see from the blog that you’ve finished recording parts of the new album which we’re really looking for­ward to hearing. Do you have a release date yet?

Chrigel: A release date isn’t fixed so far. But we plan to release the album early next year.

Wyldwood: You’re touring with Children of Bodom in early 2012 for the 15th anniversary tour in North America, any plans to come to the UK for the later stages of the tour?

Chrigel: Sure, yeah! But dates aren’t con­firmed yet, so I can’t tell you any­thing concrete.

Wyldwood: What is the funniest experience you’ve had at a show?

Chrigel: Oh, hard to say. Over the years we experienced lots of quite funny things and /​or incidents during our shows. One probably quite funny thing once happened to me during an US tour: I was just about to [play] the tin whistle during one of our songs, when it literally broke into two pieces for whatever strange reasons. So I just stood there and watched the mouth piece of the whistle rolling across the stage… guess I just looked like a complete retard and I was just laughing, couldn’t help it. I mean, we’re pretty much prepared for any­thing that could happen on stage. But was something I really didn’t expect. Judging from the faces in the front row, people seemed to have a good laugh too, so fair enough.

Wyldwood: We love EluTV and we eagerly await each episode. What made you come up with the idea?

Chrigel: We always did newsletters, blogs, tweets and the whole thing. One day, our drummer came up with the idea of EluTV. It’s like a newsletter in the form of short tv episodes. Probably more entertaining than a newsletter. 😉

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