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Mesmerising and multi-faceted, Blood Ceremony have spent the last several years blurring the lines between heavy music’s past and present. Formed in Toronto, Canada, in 2006, they were swiftly heralded as a cut above the retro rock pack, armed as they were with a sound that incorporated the riff-driven power of doom, the woozy, warm glow of psychedelia and the flute-fuelled magick of acid folk and rootsy prog. After releasing their self-titled debut album through Rise Above Records in 2008, Blood Ceremony have been a superlative presence in the underground; expanding their sonic vision in multiple directions, as albums like 2013’s The Eldritch Dark and, most recently, Lord of Misrule (2016) set a new standard for kaleidoscopic, analogue fervour. Seven years have passed since Blood Ceremony last released a full-length album, but that all changes in 2023. Pieced together during lockdown months, and brought to fruition with a host of esteemed special guests, the Canadians’ fifth album, The Old Ways Remain, is set to emerge in the spring. Diverse, hypnotic and eminently groovy, the new songs push Blood Ceremony’s sound into new territory while also honouring the atavistic ethos that has led them to such triumphs in the past. Initial plans to repeat the successful formula that birthed Lord of Misrule and fly to the UK to record again at Toe Rag Studios in London fell victim to Covid restrictions, and so Sean and his comrades – Alia O’Brien (vocals/flute/organ), Lucas Gadke (bass) and Michael Carillo (drums) – switched to a simpler but equally satisfying Plan B. “By late 2021, we realised that if we were ever going to finish a new album, we’d just have to record locally and do it ourselves, and that’s what we did. We started rehearsing the material again and were still really excited by it. Once we revisited everything, we had a new burst of energy. We found a local studio that had what we needed and we were off! Recording nearby allowed us to bring in friends like Laura Bates from (fellow folk-doom crew) Völur to play fiddle, Joseph Shabason added saxophone to Eugenie, and Mike Eckert played pedal steel on Hecate. We produced ourselves, along with our friend, Paul Kehayas. We worked with an engineer named Chris Snow who immediately got what we were trying to do. Richard Whittaker mixed the tracks at his London, UK, studio, and we think he did a great job.” - Sean Kennedy (Guitar)