Blood Ceremony to Release Lord of Misrule March 25
Toronto’s Blood Ceremony will release their fourth album, Lord of Misrule, via Rise Above Records on March 25. The record follows three years after the widely and wildly acclaimed The Eldritch Dark, and will take the four-piece back to Europe this Spring to play Roadburn, Desertfest and presumably more besides. Once upon a long-ass time ago, I hosted a premiere of “My Demon Brother” from the band’s 2011 outing, Living with the Ancients, but I wouldn’t imagine myself cool enough for such things at this point. Nonetheless, it’s a spiffy cover, and they’re a band whose influence continues to spread, so I’ve no doubt the record will be worth digging into when it arrives in just over two months.
The PR wire brings art and details:
BLOOD CEREMONY To Release Lord of Misrule March 25th on Rise Above Records
Artwork and Track Listing Revealed
In a tradition that dates back to Late Antiquity, the Lord Of Misrule or “Abbot Of Unreason” was the doomed figure elected to preside over the Feast Of Fools, an annual Saturnalian bacchanalia in which masters became servants and servants masters, while drunken revelry and strange entertainments pervaded Britain and parts of mainland Europe for 30 days. At the end of the month’s festivities, the Lord of Misrule’s throat was cut in sacrifice to Saturn.
Taking its title from this fascinating slice of religious history, BLOOD CEREMONY’s fourth album evokes pagan rites and the bizarre mystical underbelly of rural Britain. Embracing the psychedelic and progressive in their indelible songcraft, guitarist Sean Kennedy, bassist Lucas Gadke, drummer Michael Carrillo and triple threat vocalist/flautist/organist Alia O’Brien have created what Kennedy calls “a very English album,” despite the band’s very Canadian heritage. Recorded to analogue tape with producer Liam Watson at Toe Rag Studios in London, Lord Of Misrule possesses a timeless quality within the rock epoch: It could stand alongside a Shocking Blue or Deep Purple record as easily as it will take its place among 2016’s finest albums.
Lord of Misrule conjures a lush atmosphere in which the pastoral horror of The Wicker Man and the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin-as viewed through the lens flare of Ava Gardner’s witchy turn in 1970’s The Devil’s Widow-are alchemized into songs of seduction and mortality. “There’s no defining concept running through the album, unless one can imagine a lord of misrule offering each song as a different entertainment,” Kennedy says. “The lyrics tend to deal, in different measure, with obsession, love and death.”
Lord of Misrule will be released March 26th via Rise Above Records.
Lord of Misrule Track Listing:
1. The Devil’s Widow
2. Loreley
3. The Rogue’s Lot
4. Lord of Misrule
5. Half Moon Street
6. The Weird of Finistere
7. Flower Phantoms
8. Old Fires
9. Things Present, Things Past
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https://www.facebook.com/bloodceremonyrock
riseaboverecords.com
