blood ceremony living with the ancients

Released: 07 March 2011 Label: Rise Above

Three years ago this Canadian band’s self-titled debut garnered a lot of attention for their fusing of Sabbathian riffs, Tull-esque folk melodies and psychadelia – not to mention vocalist Alia O’Brien’s distinctive, haunting voice.

In many ways Living With the Ancients is a direct follow on from its predecessor, all of the same elements are here but everything here feels just that little bit tauter and the band are clearly more confident in their songwriting and performance. The one real change on this second album is that the guitar has been pushed a bit more upfront and the guitar sound itself is just that little bit weightier, at turns channelling the spirits of icons like Tony Iommi and Jimmy Page. Fans of the first album needn’t worry though as the dramatic organ flourishes, often reminiscent of long-running Granada Television current affairs show World In Action’s bombastic title music, and the meandering flute melodies are all still present and correct. The real focal point of the band is O’Brien’s voice though. She possesses a much more classic rock voice rather than the operatics favoured by the majority of the new generation of “female fronted metal” bands and I suspect that the likes of Ann Wilson and Joan Jett did much more to influence her than any soprano.

Whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s been an explosion of “retro” bands in this “proto-metal” style since Blood Ceremony released their debut there has certainly been an upsurge in both the number of bands attempting to bring back that occult feel from the early days of heavy metal when the distinction between ‘hard rock’ and ‘heavy metal’ was much blurrier and in the number of people paying attention to them. Blood Ceremony are still able to stand out from the ever-increasing crowd though and that’s testament to the uniqueness of the band’s sound which, while clearly taking elements from many other bands, manages to blend those influences into a sound that is all their own.

by Neil Woodfin