London's Doom behemoths Centurions Ghost make a triumphant return with their second album "The Great Work". Off the back of their marathon trek across Europe in support of the album we spoke to band voice-piece 'filthy' Rich Whittaker.

Well, where to start….its been out in the shops since August, by all accounts its selling rather well and we’re getting some fantastic feedback from both the press and metal underground. It seems we’re finally putting to rest any ghosts from the past, the future is looking very bright indeed!

The bands debut “The Sign Of Things To Come” was a huge success for the band both from fans and media alike. Given this success how did you approach the writing of the new album?

We actually started writing this album immediately after the release of ‘A Sign Of Things To Come’ but what with the many line up changes and intense touring schedule it took us two years to complete and release. Our approach on writing the new album didn’t change at all, we just worked with whatever was at our disposal and injected some serious hard graft and ‘The Great Work’ is the end result.

Where, how long and what was the studio experience for the new album. Where there any significant changes to the recording process for “The Great Work”?

As I recall the first track to be recorded was Specimen 7, this was laid down in January 2007 at FX, we then tracked the drums, bass and Jonny’s guitar at GTO Studios in March.  We then we recorded the remaining parts at FX.  The significant changes in the recording process was this time I recorded the album and Kev Vanbergen mixed it whereas ‘A Sign Of Things To Come’ was recorded by Paul Smith and I mixed it.  Another change in the recording process was, for The Great Work. We created rough demos to use as templates, this gave us a better structure to work to and made the whole process much smoother.

Bruce Falkinberg of The Hidden Hand was earmarked to mix “The Sign Of Things To Come” but for one reason or another that never took place. Were there any thoughts to bring him in for “The Great Work”? How did you decide upon the eventual producer Kevin Van Bergen?

Bruce did offer to mix ‘A Sign…’ but at the time his touring schedule with The Hidden Hand was way too hectic and in the end our release deadline couldn’t allow for anymore time to be wasted so I locked myself in the studio at FX for a week and mixed the fucker down! An up and coming engineer called Kev Vanbergen mixed ‘The Great Work’ for us (under my watchful of course!), I’ve known Kev for about five years and I’ve heard a lot of his work (which is pretty damn impressive). He was into what we were doing and offered to mix one of our demo tracks for us for free, the result was awesome so we immediately asked him to mix the album. We hope to work with him more in the future as he seems to know exactly what kinda sound we are looking for.

The two years between records has been a turbulent time for the band in terms of personnel changes. What were the reasons behind James Begley and Dan 138 departure from the band?

Tactfully speaking, Centurions Ghost is a very demanding beast and unfortunately not everyone is able to give the commitment it requires. It is a shame that we had to part ways with all those great musicians but that’s the way it goes I suppose.

Mark has been a friend of ours for years and was drafted in to cover James’ vocals on our first European tour….the rest is history. Jonny joined us almost 18 months ago replacing Stuart Poole, I seem to remember that he answered a myspace musicians wanted ad which we put out and had two weeks to learn our entire set before we hit the road with Fall Of The Idols. Fed replaced Dan 138 about six months ago, basically we put the word out on the London metal scene that we urgently required a guitarist and Fed was suggested to us, again she had about two weeks to learn the set before we toured Europe with Earthride and The Gates Of Slumber. Mark, Fed and Jon bring stability to the line up which is something we haven’t had in the past, the band is tighter and more aggressive and more determined than ever. Also, the writing process has input from all five members, whereas in the past it was only 50-60% of the line-up offering any kind of compositional ideas.

The album artwork is from the hand of none other than Albert Witchfinder of Reverend Bizarre. How did Albert get involved in the project and how did the concept evolve?

Albert is a fantastic artist, and I am sure you will agree that the artwork he created for us is absolutely amazing. We became friends with Albert during the Blood March Through Europe tour last year, we asked him if he would be interested in doing some artwork for us and he agreed. All he had to work from was the name of the album and four rough demo tracks!

The Great Work or Magnum Opus dates back to medieval alchemy and the practice of turning base metal into gold. Many secret orders have adopted this phrase as a metaphor for death and rebirth and the striving for spiritual perfection, enlightenment through constant learning and improvement. It’s a slightly crude and simplistic way of describing it, but we felt that it was a great analogy for what we were trying to achieve with Centurions Ghost. Death and rebirth, in the sense that the band went through upheavals with the departures of James, Andy and Stuart, but was essentially reborn with a new line-up that was stronger than before. We were (and are) pushing ourselves for constant improvement, learning, refining our craft and chasing this strange and mysterious Holy Grail. The Holy Grail in this case being musical rather than spiritual.

Stylistically the album encompasses a number of differing influences and genres, ranging from Doom through to some Thrash elements. Who brings what to the band which gives your sound such diversity?

The past two years have seen the band out on the road extensively, most recently with Earthride and The Gates Of Slumber. What have you learnt from your time on tour, and is touring something you enjoy?

Touring is certainly not for the weak; it sorts the men from the boys every time!  Basically you spend two weeks crammed into a small bus or van experiencing extreme temperatures, smells and severe pain only to be released once a night to eat shit food, drink massive amounts of shit beer, play a gig then if you’re lucky sleep for about an hour before hitting the road to do it all again, it is the depths of depravity, mental torture and leaves you battered and bruised in every way possible…. and we can’t get enough of it!!!

The album was released back in August and to promote this we toured the US with The Gates Of Slumber, then we returned to do the UK tour with Candlemass. We are now making tour plans for 2008, full details will be revealed very soon!

Rumour has it that a DVD is in the pipeline, filmed at the Dutch Doom Day, any truth to this? If so when can we expect a release date and what was it like to record what must have been an already pressured show?

That is correct, the DVD was edited together about 8 months ago by Camisole Pictures and is supposed to be coming out on the Dutch label Descent Productions and the Japanese label Weird Truth.  I have no idea when this is to be released; all I can say is watch this space!  As for recording the video, we found it quite easy, the camera crew kept out of our way as much as possible so as not to affect the performance and for me there was no extra pressure at all, if nothing else it simply fired me up even more!

I dunno really, we don’t claim to be a doom band, yeah sure we got slow heavy riffs but as far as we’re concerned we’re just a metal band. Too much emphasis is put on pigeonholing bands these days, people need to relax and just accept the fact that it doesn’t matter what subgenre and band falls under!

If all goes to plan we’ll be releasing a live EP called ‘Live From Gods Own Country’, a split 7” picture disc The Gates Of Slumber is currently being recorded then the release of our third album ‘Burning Bridges & Dancing On The Ashes’ which is already almost half written!!!