I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the movie Idiocracy, because of both, well… [gestures broadly at everything] …as well as this new Elvenking album, Reader of the Runes — Luna. If you’re unfamiliar, Idiocracy tells the story of Joe Bauers, who’s chosen for a military experiment into suspended animation by being the most average human being alive. The experiment goes wrong, and Bauers winds up in hibernation for some 500 years. In that time, society’s collective intelligence declines so significantly that when Bauers comes to, he’s no longer the 50th-percentile-of-everything, but rather the world’s smartest man.

Luna — the final album in Elvenking’s Reader of the Runes concept album trilogy — follows 2019’s excellent Divinations and 2023’s just-okay Rapture. And unfortunately, it’s more akin to the latter than the former. While never quite as catastrophic as, say… the world in which Bauers awakens in Idiocracy — that of TV programs called OW! MY BALLS or people watering plants with sports drinks — it does make a great analogue for Bauers himself: it’s just… entirely average.

But let’s start with the things Elvenking does well here. As ever, the band retains a terrific sense of melody, which they weave seamlessly into just about any arrangement. The band’s also fond of incorporating the occasional bit of more aggressive fare — that’s “growls” to you — into their folky template, and they do so both sparingly and generally tastefully throughout Luna.

On tracks like “On These Haunted Shores” or “Throes of Atonement,” guitarists Aydan and Headmatt (Headmatt?) and violinist Lethien all play effortlessly off one another, creating captivating tapestries of folky power metal. The early-album, 1-2 punch of “Luna” and “Gone Epoch” is also quite a bit of fun, with the former acting as a quick-hitting jolt of electricity before the latter serves up one of the album’s catchiest choruses. Hell, most of Luna’s tracks are good for at least a killer moment or two.

Here’s the problem, though: far too many of them are also good for an unforced error or two from the band. Some of these, admittedly, are small things, and maybe even fall into the “more of a me problem” category. (An example: the band loves the ol’ “key-change-the-last-chorus-for-dramatic-effect” trick; this hasn’t made even one track “better” in forever, meanwhile Luna tries it on multiple.)

But some are significant enough to entirely derail tracks. Leadoff track “Season of the Owl,” for example, wastes an instantly captivating introduction — Chants! Frenetic pacing! Shreddy guitar leads! — with a chorus so unbearably clunky it feels like it’s been picked from an entirely different song. [On the topic of “feels-like-it’s-been-picked-from-an-entirely-different” things, songs like “The Weeping” and “The Ghosting” feel cherry-picked from different albums altogether: the former from something slower and more contemplative, the latter nearly literally from In Flames’ Clayman, who would like its “Only for the Weak” back, please.]

The eleven-minute closing track, “Reader of the Runes – Book II”, was not a disappointment in my book, but only because it’s so hard to have hope for eleven-minute closing tracks in the first place. Over that span, Elvenking compiles motifs from what sound like three or four different tunes and Frankensteins them into one, uh… epic. The band’s said they wanted to make their own “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” or “Alexander the Great,” but they’ve landed in Maiden’s mid-90s, “more sections = prog” era instead. There is a decently catchy refrain they use to tie all these disparate parts back together, but it’s not enough to save this one.

All told, after opening this grand Reader of the Runes saga with a bang, Elvenking’s closed it off with a relative whimper. Luna isn’t an outright bad album, just a frustratingly okay one from a band we know is capable of better.

Keep it heavy,
—Dan

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Reader of the Runes — Luna is available now via Reaper Entertainment. For more information on Elvenking, visit the band’s official website.