“It will be our first time playing in Australia, and we’re extremely excited about that, we’re really looking forward to it,” he proclaims. “We’ve never played China before. I mean, we’ve played Asia before, but never in China. So that will be interesting I believe! So yeah, it’s a year of firsts for us.”
As for what Aussie audiences can expect from Eluveitie’s maiden voyage, Chirgel gives us a tongue-in-cheek hint. “Well I’ve never been to one of our shows, so I can’t really say!” He jokes. “But judging by what I read of our live shows, it’s always pretty energetic. And it’s just all about the music, we don’t come out with any huge stage setups or visual elements or anything like that. We go onstage in our everyday clothes, and it’s all about music, we just play the music and that’s about it,” he states.
“But since it’s our first time in Australia, I think we’ll play quite an extended set, with songs from all of our discography. It will be good. Our shows are authentic, it’s about music, all the way.”
In the blink of an eye, a year has gone past since the release of the band’s last album, Helvetios, and Chrigel tells us that he has been blown away by the reaction to it, from critics and fans alike, and in the way fans react to the new songs in a live setting.
“Actually, it’s been absolutely fantastic,” he enthuses, “when we release the album, we usually don’t have expectations, we just release it and see what happens with it. But when we released this one, it was so much more than what we thought would happen. It was amazing, and it’s been our most successful album. It hit the charts all over Europe, it cracked the Billboard charts in the USA. In Europe it charted high, unexpectedly high for a metal band, which was mindblowing, that music doesn’t usually get that high in the charts,” he beams.
“I think number one was Lady Gaga, and then us, and people were like ‘what the fuck?’, I don’t think that’s happened before! So that was amazing, and then the reaction of the fans was really cool. When we started to tour, people were asking for the new songs as much as the old, so it’s been really great.”
Just as it seems like yesterday that Helvetios was released, Chrigel feels like the last ten years has flown by, with the band’s schedule being so full.
“The last ten years have been incredibly intense,” he tells us, “it’s been a lot of work, and there’s always so much happening, and it definitely doesn’t seem like ten years. It’s been like a dream, kind of a whirlwind.”
And the band’s output over the last six or seven years definitely tells the story. Between 2006 and 2012 they released five studio albums and two live albums, on top of touring constantly. Chrigel is at a bit of a loss as to how they have kept up that pace and been so productive, but simply puts it down to an extreme love of, indeed an addiction to, the music itself.
“I don’t know, we’re just music junkies I suppose,” he laughs. “I know it sounds cheesy, but that’s what it is. That’s what we want to do, that’s what our passion is, that’s the way it’s worked out. We’re touring all the fucking time, and when a tour is finished we just working on another album, that’s just what we wanna do.”
So does Chirgel have another ten years in him? “Oh, how am I supposed to know!” he says in mock outrage. “I mean, there is no intention to stop or change, or anything. I hope to do this for the rest of my life if I could.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
