Album Review: Bog Bodies, Reclaim The Ritual

Bog Bodies’ frontman and songwriter-in-chief Dan Maher is inspired by Ireland’s ancient past; the band have even recorded inside a megalithic passage tomb. Indeed, their particular brand of Celtic rock and trad fusion has been dubbed heavy folk or, more accurately, druid rock.

On Reclaim The Ritual, ‘Create And Destroy’ comes across like an unplugged Rage Against the Machine; ‘I Caught Her Eye’ is two minutes and 25 seconds of didgeridoo-inspired trance; and the haunting melody of ‘This Reality’ sounds like it blew in on warm winds from the Sahara. When not waxing lyrical about witches and druids, Bog Bodies focus tellingly on the catastrophe of climate change. On ‘Sun is Screaming’, Maher bemoans “The fairytale that we’ve been told/ of endless growth and endless gold”; the bodhrán-driven ‘The Regime’ is an environmental call-to-arms.

The wonderful ‘Daithí’ is worth the price of admission alone, focusing more on the swirl of the trad and less on the fury of the rock; an epic of myth and mystery, it tells of an ancient high king of Ireland, who was killed by a bolt of lightning while crossing the Alps.

I can imagine Bog Bodies creating quite the maelstrom in a live setting, but stripped of the sweat and passion, they occasionally could do with a little more edge in the studio. Overall, it is the trad elements of their sound that make this special.

7/10