As folks say these days, “spoiler alert”; before you scan to the score at the bottom of this page I feel absolutely compelled to announce that with ‘The Old Ways Remain’ Canada’s Blood Ceremony has shot straight to the top of my “Best of 2023” list after the first play, and now having had it on a near constant repeat as I march the daily miles to my job and back I can only imagine that anything that could possibly displace it must be a work of rare genius indeed. It’s been far too long since the band unleashed the magnificent 2016 (damn, it’s been seven whole years?) ‘Lord of Misrule’, and now the world is being treated to one of the finest offerings of Occult Rock you could ever hope to experience.

Blasting off with ‘The Hellfire Club’ the band proudly nails their magical retro-rock flag to the top of a hundred foot high mast, combining clean impassioned vocals with a stripped back bass, drums, and stabbing guitar melded seamlessly with a combination of Hammond organ swirls and flute work that would surely have a certain Mr Ian Anderson nodding along appreciatively. It may be 2023 printed in my diary, but according to this album, it’s no later than 1973. ‘Ipsissimus’ follows, a term that many may know only care of the classic Hammer Horror movie ‘The Devil Rides Out’ as a level of magical attainment, but frankly the band do themselves a disfavour as this track is surely at Magus level of achievement, each of the instruments weaving together with the siren vocals of Alia O’Brien to draw the listener inexorably to the left hand path. Next up in this parade of excellence is ‘Eugenie’ that channels the spirt of their musical ancestor Black Widow directly from 1971, albeit imbuing the track with a modern energy rather than simply aping a sound from days gone by.

If by now you weren’t planning on escrowing your black t-shirts in favour of some tie-dyed threads, Blood Ceremony summon up the “Summer Of Love” with the psychedelic groove of ‘Lolly Willows’, albeit the upbeat delivery is a counterpoint to the lurking darkness the band promotes, the same combination of underlying blackness and surface lightness making up the majority of ‘Powers of Darkness’, a track that on the surface invites you to happily swing your flares to a Sixties freak out, whilst at the same time being threaded through with macabre undertones.

I know for many of the readers of this site that “heaviness” is a combination of blast beats, buzz saw guitars, and vocals screamed unintelligibly by a corpse painted would be denizen of hell, but Blood Ceremony deliver that very same celebration of the non-Christian with clean vocals and hook laden riffs, ‘The Bonfires of Belloc Coombe’ being a prime example, a Paganistic reeling fiddle adding to the Summerisle setting of the song. Oh, and if you were in any doubt of the leanings of the band, the hard rocking exhortation to traverse life in an anti-clockwise direction of ‘Widdershins’ should leave you in no doubt. By the time that ‘Hecate’ is delivered, you could almost imagine that the writing skills of Burt Bacharach had been summoned from the beyond the veil, his timeless vibe being merged with the psychedelic tendencies of the band. Likewise, it was all too easy to envisage the hairy chested Mike Myers creation Austin Powers rolling around on his rotating waterbed to this mellow throwback number as an exasperated target of his lust rolled their eyes in disgust of his lustful antics. ‘Mossy Wood’ veers away from the psychedelic to the folky, whilst album closer ‘Song of the Morrow’ combines all the elements the band have previously shared between tracks into one mind altering musical melange, veering from the mellow and stripped back to layered sonic magnificence.

Blood Ceremony is touring the UK soon with Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, and despite having been sent a free review download, my plan when I get to the show, which I paid for, not comped, is to hit the merch stand and buy the album. I highly recommend you do the same.

(9/10 Spenny)

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