Band:	Blood Ceremony
Album:	The Old Ways Remain
Style:	Psychedelic doom metal
Release date:	May 2023

01. The Hellfire Club
02. Ipsissimus
03. Eugenie
04. Lolly Willows
05. Powers Of Darkness
06. The Bonfires At Belloc Coombe
07. Widdershins
08. Hecate
09. Mossy Wood
10. Song Of The Morrow
11. Falling [Iron Maiden cover]
12. Powers Of Darkness [demo version]

Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull walk into a bar where Jimi Hendrix has just risen from his grave… There’s more to it than that, of course; there’s psychedelic retro-rock, acid folk vibes and a woman on vocals. Calling their style “witch rock”, Canadian Blood Ceremony is sometimes pop, sometimes doom, sometimes folk, most of the time all of these simultaneously, and always interesting and entertaining. I went into this album expecting whatever “psychedelic doom metal” would sound like (something like Ufomammut’s Fenice, perhaps?), but ended up getting swinging, flute-playing doom’n’roll with, a bunch of additional 60s-and-70s sounding instruments (we’ll get to that later) and an attitude.

Don’t be fooled by the relatively unassuming first chords of The Old Ways Remain, Blood Ceremony has many surprises in store for you. I’ll try not to spoil them all (but likely will anyway, as it goes). A droning organ and an unmistakable “Purple Haze” covers both the rhythm and lead guitars as opening song “The Hellfire Club” drops into a slightly off-kilter, doomy chorus. It is one of a few rare examples where the chorus is, likely intentionally, the least memorable part of the song (which is not a bad thing at all, but plays with dynamics very well). At the three-minute mark, you’ll realise that Blood Ceremony is much more than a Ye Good Olde Days-worshipping retro band, as a drum break introduces a playful Jethro Tull flute that will help define the entire album from here on.

The very poppy “Ipsissimus” switches up the dynamics, opting for a doomy verse and an earworm of a chorus consisting of Alia chanting the song title over and over to good effect. It does make me wonder how they pull this off live, as she is responsible for both vocals and flute, but that’s beside the point. A sexy bass riff, groovy blues guitars and slightly dissonant flute drives “Eugenie”, where a Hammond organ blends perfectly with the vocals. Halfway through, “Eugenie” quickly becomes one of my favourite cuts on The Old Ways Remain, as a 70s organ solo gives way to a jazzy saxophone that shoots the song into prog rock territory. Two saxophone solos later, Blood Ceremony sure keeps me on my toes and wondering where they’ll go next.

The Old Ways Remain turns out to be as unpredictable as the first three songs. The fast-paced doom pop of “Lolly Willows” carries a storyteller vibe with it, and the ever-evolving “The Bonfires At Belloc Coombe” further changes up Blood Ceremony’s dynamics with many twists and turns, among them a fusion-style guitar lick and a chorus mixing fun, light vocals with a heavy, epic riff. It erupts into a couple of minutes of fast-paced flute shenanigans, ascending riffs and backing choirs, setting up very well for the Black Sabbath antics on following song “Widdershins”.

Towards the bursting closer “Song Of The Morrow”, which somehow manages to combine the entire of the previous album in a single song while also adding an ambient element to top it all off, The Old Ways Remain is no longer unpredictable to me. Rather, it follows an intricate, dynamic pattern of paying homage to old heroes and re-crafting their sounds into something new that yet sounds as if it already stood the test of time for decades. It is groovy, melodic, original, and a bunch of other adjectives, too. Most of all, it is great fun.