BLOOD CEREMONY: BLOOD CEREMONY (2008)
1) Master Of Confusion; 2) I'm
Coming With You; 3) Into The Coven; 4) A Wine Of Wizardry; 5) Rare Lord; 6)
Return To Forever; 7) Hop Toad; 8) Children Of The Future; 9) Hymn To Pan.
Nobody could predict that, having hired Tony
Iommi to replace Mick Abrahams in Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson pretty much signed
his death warrant as a creative force. The entrepreneurial, quick-witted Iommi
very quickly assumed command, placing his iron-fingered riffage above everybody
and everything else. To ensure his dominance over the rest of the band, he
brought in old pal Geezer Butler to play bass and write exclusive lyrics about
witches, wizards, and warlocks, while at the same time relegating Ian Anderson
to the only thing that, according to Tony's opinion, he really did well: play
the flute.
Since, because of these changes, the newly
reformed band needed a singer, Tony thought of bringing back his other pal,
Ozzy Osbourne — seeing as how, though, the latter was just recently sentenced
to three years of prison for stealing a broken radio set, they decided to go
for a female touch instead and hired Sonja Kristina from Curved Air, and she,
in turn, brought along her old pal, Ray Manzarek, from the Doors. The newly
gathered supergroup then went on to call itself «Blood Ceremony» and became the
chief competitor of Uriah Heep on the «demons & wizards» market, although
their melting-pot approach never translated to much commercial or critical success.
Eventually, the enthusiasm just fizzled out, and everybody went their own way.
Iommi returned to his old sheet metal factory, Ian Anderson retired to raise
Guernsey cows and mistletoe, Sonja Kristina got married to Ritchie Blackmore, Manzarek
secured a job as gatekeeper at the Père Lachaise, and Geezer Butler got
electrocuted onstage while playing a bass tritone.
Fast forward to 2008 and switch from this parallel
universe to the one of whose reality we feel a little more certain (with undue
arrogance, perhaps), and welcome the new
Blood Ceremony, one of these specially designed «what if...?» bands if there
ever was one. The settings are a little different, but the essence is pretty
much the same. They do hail from Toronto rather than England, and their lineup
consists of Jeremy Finkelstein on drums, Chris Landon on bass, Sean Kennedy on
guitars, and Alia O'Brien on vocals, keyboards, and, yes, flute (so she
combines the Kristina, Manzarek, and
Anderson parts all in one).
It is impossible to even begin to try to take
this music seriously — doing so will immediately place this band in the Uriah
Heep category. However, it is
possible to be amused and even mildly stimulated by it as a contemporary
retro-genre experiment. The Internet age exposure to all sorts of all sorts of
things shows us that in the 2000s, there is a demand for everything: we are living in a poly-eclectic age the likes of which
the world has never seen before, and existing demand for «heavy witchy music»
of the early 1970s should come of as little surprise to us as demand for any
other style of music that the human mind can imagine. In fact, this type of
demand may even be higher than the average — off the top of my head, I can remember
Black Mountain doing similar stuff and even getting away with it, critically
and commercially.
Blood Ceremony, however, are much more
«hardcore» than Black Mountain. Once they get their groove going, they do not
strive all that much to change or diversify it, and their lyrical focus on
«dark pagan practices» ensures that their popularity will forever be limited to
a rather specific type of audience. Some critics have noticed them from a pat-pat-pat-her-on-the-butt
angle of view, but none of the albums charted anywhere, because most people
probably took one glance at the album cover and decided that this is one of
those hardcore fan-only archival releases from yet another forgotten band circa
1970. Like Steamhammer or something.
Well — they wouldn't be totally off base,
because it is only a good audiophile who immediately knows how to tell a 21st
century guitar tone from a 20th century one that will quickly understand what
period we are talking about here. Other than that, these guys observe the
formalities right down to their visual image (robes, capes, long hair, you name
it), and this religious devotion to such a special time and place in history
should command respect. In fact, fuck respect, I actually admire what they're doing and the cool sound they're getting. Everything
stated above is true: Iommi guitar + Anderson flute + Manzarek organ + stern female
vocals, song after song after song. And oh, those titles! ʽMaster Of
Confusionʼ. ʽInto The Covenʼ. ʽChildren Of The Futureʼ. ʽHymn To Panʼ. Classic
stuff.
You do
know what's coming up, though, right? You do
know that the next thing I am going to say is that they have one fatal flaw —
and that flaw is, of course, that the songs as such are boring and predictable.
What Sean Kennedy, credited as the chief writer for these guys, is trying to
do, as far as I can tell, is that he listens long and hard to several Black
Sabbath songs, then mixes the different chords from their riffs (as a rule,
this has to include the tritone, or
else there wouldn't be that much blood in this ceremony), then puts them back
together in different configurations. On top of this, Alia sings some nonsense
that must have been digitally generated from a list of preset of keywords (typical
example: "Worshippers have gathered under cover of dark / The sorceress is
stroking her Aeolian harp / A magus seeks alignment of the stars / Coffin-shaped
citadel a door to Mars" — I love
this!) and adds her somewhat less-than-awesome organ and flute skills to the
proceedings (I believe that a few more lessons from Mr. Ian wouldn't hurt —
most of the time she sounds like a rather timid first-year student of the
instrument).
In other words, they fall into the same trap as
most of the retro-imitators do: their love for this kind of music is ten times
larger than their talent for making this music. There is not a single riff on
here that would have the same spine-chilling effect as ʽBlack Sabbathʼ or ʽNo
Quarterʼ or even ʽLocomotive Breathʼ, despite the fact that all the songs are riff-based — rule
number one for them: if there ain't no distinct heavy riff in the song, there
ain't no song, period. But these riffs are... eh... well, I'd say they are on
the level of Sabbath's latest (13),
but what is excusable for a 65-year old Iommi, who has long since overworked
his required quota of greatness anyway, is hardly excusable for a young
ambitious pothead. Yes, and neither can these guys really solo — the lengthy
organ solo passage that O'Brien plays on ʽMaster Of Confusionʼ Manzarek-style
does not go anywhere beyond «atmospheric», and Kennedy's solos rely on the old-fashioned
stock of blues licks that we all know by heart anyway.
They try to compensate for this by fiddling
around with song structures, shifting tempos and tonalities at will, but that,
too, is sort of a requirement of the trade, and soon enough you know that if a song begins by slowly
going DOOM... DOOM... DOOM..., it will eventually speed up and go CHUG-CHUG-CHUG-CHUG for a while before
settling down again. Or there will be a stop-and-start section where Alia is
going to blow her flute and go a little crazy. For the record, though, I was
almost absolutely sure that the song ʽHop Toadʼ would include a drum solo, in
honor of yet another ʽToadʼ, but it didn't (instead, it had a very bad organ
solo), so no, you can't predict every
move. Also, if you thought that maybe they have a penchant for pastoralism in
music, don't: ʽHymn To Panʼ is as dark and somber as everything else on here
(other than the flute, I guess — maybe they thought that the presence of the
flute obliges them to dedicate at least one song to Pan, something they would
repeat on the second album as well).
Even so, all of this is such a hilarious
experience that I am still tempted to give this time-defying effort a thumbs up.
One might ask why, after all the scorn for, let's say, the unquestionably musically
superior Uriah Heep — and I would say, «for the guts». The Heepsters were
largely driven by fashion, and presented themselves and their music in much too
serious a light for me to agree to succumb to its spell. These guys, on the other hand, are the designers and executors of a
fancy musical costume ball, and they get all the ingredients just right. Even
the relatively tame musicianship — not just by modern standards, but by 1970's
standards as well — becomes an asset here, because it helps concentrate on
their «time machine» instead of their egos. If only the formula weren't that limited (it even seems limited
compared to the original Sabbath, let alone every other band from which they
draw inspiration), but I guess branching out is just not something you are
supposed to ask at all from an album recorded in 2008. So just relax, sit back,
nibble on your mandrake root, sip on your toadstool essence, and welcome into
the coven.
"doing so will immediately place this band in the Uriah Heep category."
ReplyDeleteTaking UH seriously is the biggest mistake in your review history. Read what you wrote about Bird of Prey yourself and it's clear why.
"the unquestionably musically superior Uriah Heep"
Sometimes, only sometimes. But it counts when they indeed were - then they were unique, awesome and funny at the same time. Again Bird of Prey is an excellent example.
I just listened to the first four minutes of Blood Ceremony. No surprise - I like it. Sure, derivative as hell, but I liked it nonetheless. Later I'll listen to the rest.
This album is great fun, but I think the voice of Alia O'Brian a bit weak and moreover not very expressive. I'd like to have me a nice whine a la Osbourne ("dreams turn to nightmares" or better still: "I am iron maaaaannn"), a scream a la Gillan (a well placed "wwhhhaaaa!") or indeed some silly harmonies a la UH (like "aaah aaah aaah aaah! ah!" at the beginning of Poet's Justice). Some sarcasm a la Ian Anderson would also have been great ("sitting on the park bench"). She tries now and then, but it's not very convincing.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone with an appreciation for this kind of neo-Black-Zeppelin sort of thing, I definitely recommend Danava and The Sword, and specifically their albums Hemisphere of Shadows and Warp Riders, respectively.
ReplyDeleteI still say Wounded Kings do this sort of thing better, sans goofiness :)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yPGkfFb9ls&t=31m25s
Sure these guys weren't inspired at all by Catapilla, George? If you've never heard of 'em, they were kind of a jazz-prog-metal fusion group with a female singer that did an album back in 1971 that every music historian/critic should hear.
ReplyDelete