The Remains Of The Day

After a seven-year gap, Canadian occult rockers Blood Ceremony are back with The Old Ways Remain. Inspired by 70s soundtracks, folk and women’s literature, its 10 tracks of esoteric goodness are definitely worth the wait. Vocalist, organist and flutist Alia O’Brien discusses the benefits of recording local, her teenage passion for Jethro Tull and her new-found joy for foraging.

- Jo Kendall

It’s 6am in Edmonton, Alberta, and Blood Ceremony’s frontwoman Alia O’Brien is up and at ’em. Well, up and at Prog, via Zoom. “No, I’ve not had breakfast yet,” she laughs, when asked. But what would the first meal of the day be for Blood Ceremony, we wonder? “Probably pancakes,” she decides, “bloody pancakes with raspberry, some sort of sacrificial coulis…”

Our stomachs rumbling, it’s time to focus not on food, but on Blood Ceremony’s new album, The Old Ways Remain – the band’s fifth, with a seven-year gap since 2016’s acclaimed Lord Of Misrule.

In 2020 the record was written and ready to go, but in a similar scenario to many acts, the pandemic meant Blood Ceremony couldn’t move around to record The Old Ways Remain, travelling to their favourite studio, Toe Rag in London, as they’d planned. When conditions were safer (“We had a lot of lockdowns,” O’Brien recalls), the Toronto quartet found a workaround that delivered refreshing results.

“Not working at Toe Rag with [owner- producer] Liam [Watson] hurt a little,” O’Brien sighs, “but we decided to go local, because we just weren’t really sure what was gonna happen with Covid.”

Unusually, the band – completed by guitarist Sean Kennedy, bassist Lucas Gadke and drummer Michael Carrillo – were able to sit with the new songs for longer and to re-evaluate.

“We haven’t had that before,” O’Brien explains. “We’ve usually been writing up until the moment we go to record…”