A Celtic Legacy

Cruachan is a band that constantly changed its style. I know people who would say that such a band is diversified, exciting and original. The truth is that Cruachan sounds often confusing, directionless and unconvincing. Let's just take the vocalists as examples. We get to hear average black metal grunts, an exchangeable hardcore shouting voice, elegant clean vocals from a female singer plus occasional clean male guest singers with weird accents that add a certain charm. The music itself is just as random. Cruachan offer acoustic folk sounds, commercial folk rock, female-fronted folk metal and blackened folk metal with symphonic elements. Original songs meet different cover tracks of mostly traditional folk tunes. We get everything from songs under two minutes up to tracks reaching nearly eight minutes. One gets the impression to listen to a compilation involving at least four different bands instead of listening to an actual greatest hits record of one single group. Don't expect any coherent progressions in style, guiding lines or logical structures. All of these things are completely absent and that's not because this is a compilation but something concerning the band in general.

The song writing isn't much better. The longer songs are extremely tiring and repetitive and especially the folk sections are inducing serious headaches after a certain time. If those tracks were half as long, they would actually be good average tracks. The Celtic whistle melodies almost always sound exactly the same. The folk elements are redundant and uninspired which is a bad starting point for a folk metal band. The metal sound isn't spectacular either. The riffs are mostly simple, the rhythm section is repetitive and there are no impressive solo parts either. The only thing that seems to drive the sound of the band is the weird diversity of styles from one song to the other but rarely within the same tracks which might be interesting for a handful of songs at best but which quickly loses its charm. In addition to this, the earlier blackened folk metal songs have a horrible production that don't fit with the more polished sound of the middle years. This sound isn't authentic as some black metal aficionados might claim but simply out of place on a record which is supposed to present the band's greatest moments. The label could at least have spent some money on a remastered production but as it is, we get some radio-friendly folk rock next to some gloomy garage demo sounds. The two bonus tracks aren't interesting either. ''Little Timmy Scumbag'' doesn't feature any folk instruments and offers laughable vocal efforts over chugging riffs that sound like a Metallica parody. ''Bloody Sunday'' is an exchangeable acoustic folk track musically but actually listenable thanks to its meaningful lyrics.

On the positive side, this compilation has a few isolated enjoyable tunes, most notably the band's only hit which is a great version of ''Ride On'' that starts in an appeasing and peaceful manner with female clean vocals and guest vocals by The Pogues' front man Shane MacGowan over harmonious whistle and violin sounds to evolve into a liberating heavy metal track featuring powerful riffs and a harsher shouting voice.

Despite a high degree of diversity and a few great tracks, this compilation is overall a misfit of confusing genres from a band that lacks identity. Folk metal aficionados could grab a copy at a cheap price to complete their extensive collections. Anybody else can wholeheartedly skip this release.