One of the musicians behind the metal record picked as the year’s best by a Canadian band grew up in the Yukon. Rory O’Brien plays bass for Anciients whose album Beyond the Reach of the Sun won the Juno for Heavy Metal Album of the Year at the awards ceremony held March 30 in Vancouver.
O’Brien is a relatively new addition to the past Juno winners based in B.C. He joined the band in the winter of 2023, in time to record the album that would win the 2025 Juno.
Anciients has gone through personnel changes since forming in 2011. The lineup as it stands now is: lead vocalist and guitarist Kenny Cook, guitarist Brock Macinnes, drummer Mike Hannay and O’Brien on bass.
“A lot of it was sort of riffs that, you know, Kenny and Brock had been working on over the past couple of years. And when I joined there were a few songs that were, you know, 90-per-cent there, and then there was a few other songs that were just kind of ideas, and then a handful of songs we wrote in that month that we were there and we did all the arrangements in the rehearsal space,” O’Brien said of working on Beyond the Reach of the Sun.
O’Brien says he’s been having fun performing the material from the album. He described the track Despoiled as “a real stomper,” and says he also enjoys playing Is It Your God, about the closest that Anciients gets to a ballad on the latest record, live.
“And then The Torch is just a total ripper from start to finish. A lot a lot of fancy finger work on that one, so short and sweet, but it's definitely a lot of fun when you get it under your fingers,” he said.
O’Brien describes a range of ideas and influences making it onto songs across Anciients’ discography with Beyond the Reach of the Sun being no exception. He said there is notable influence of the Seattle grunge sound on the latest record, particularly on Is It Your God.
There are two different guitar tunings on the album but O’Brien doesn’t have to re-tune his 5-string bass, making it with work with some “fancy fretwork.” The Jackson bass that O’Brien plays live and on Beyond the Reach of the Sun shares a similar body shape to the Rickenbacker basses that were the chosen axe of Mötorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister.
O’Brien had been in Anciients’ orbit for years, sharing spaces and collaborating with some of the same musicians as the Juno winners’ past and present members.
In the past he has played with Bushwhacker, who were founded in the Yukon, and Ritual Dictates, a side project he shares with some other B.C. metal heavyweights. With Bushwhacker, he played on the same lineup as Anciients at the 2015 Armstrong Metal Festival in B.C. He had attended the festival earlier with some buddies from the Yukon when it coincided with a planned road trip south.
While in Vancouver and playing with another band, O’Brien says he ran into Anciients former bass player “Boon” Gustafson at a rehearsal space during an important time in the band’s history.
“That was actually Anciients’ first few formative jams that I happen to just be in the other room with a different band. It's kind of a weird aligning of the stars in some way,” O’Brien said.
The Junos created “a whirlwind of a day” for O’Brien and his bandmates. They were set to attend a gala on March 29 before headlining a show as part of the Juno festival that same night.
“We kind of had to go get our gear, load into the venue early in the day, do a sound check, race to a hotel where we all got changed into our suits and with all our wives and girlfriends, and then run to the gala, show up, find out we win, do all the press, fly out of there, change out of our suits into our filthy gig-show clothing and then head to the venue and set up our merch table and play a gig," he said.
"It was mayhem."
O’Brien said some of the band’s other recent performances were on the sunshine Coast of B.C. where they found a small but enthusiastic community of metalheads.
“The dust has settled a bit from the Junos, and we do have a bit of time over the summer where we, our schedules, are a little bit clear. So, we're gonna sit down in the room and and start writing again, coming up with some stuff for the next records,” O’Brien added regarding the band’s future plans.
“You don’t want to sit on your laurels for too long.”
Up next on stage for them are an appearance at the Modified Ghost festival in Vancouver in May and some August dates in the U.K.
O’Brien hinted at a big tour announcement that will be made public soon.
Fans can follow news from the band on Instagram and Facebook. Their music and merchandise is for sale via Bandcamp, the band’s website and that of its record label Seasons of the Mist.
O'Brien says he wouldn’t be against bringing the Juno-winning band up to Whitehorse for a show if there is sufficient interest.
Contact Jim Elliot at jim.elliot@yukon-news.com
