When Crown Lands found themselves without a label, they immersed themselves in total creative freedom, magic mushrooms and 80s King Crimson. The result is a widescreen three-album arc, starting with two psychedelic meditation records, Ritual I and Ritual II. Prog catches up with the duo to find out more about their epic prog dreams and the final part of their trilogy.
Crown Lands were granted something of a resurrection when InsideOutMusic signed the Canadian multi-instrumentalist duo. The move came after their two albums with Universal Music Canada/Spinefarm – in their own words – rejected the sound that got them signed to explore far more progressive universes.
Kevin Comeau (guitar, bass, keyboards) says the musical landscape shifted as they made second album Fearless in 2023. When they expressed a desire to release 20-minute opening track Starlifter: Fearless Part II as a single, it was clear to the band that their label was on a different page.
“When we signed, we were gambling away the right to our music in exchange for tour support,” Comeau says.“ Then Covid happened and all the tours got cancelled. There was an understanding that the relationship, financially, wasn’t going to work. That’s why we wanted Fearless to be the record we wanted to make, and we wanted to be sure they’d be good sports about putting it out.” Starlifter flopped commercially, but it got them noticed by prog crowds – a world in which the band feel more at home. “We felt vindicated taking that risk,” says Comeau.
When their record deal expired, they looked on the bright side: the shackles were off. They retreated to Chalet Studios in Ontario, where Rush wrote Presto, Roll The Bones, Test For Echo and Counterparts, intending to write a meditation album. What transpired was a little more colourful.
“We started each day by doing yoga and breathing exercises. Then we took mushrooms and it got a little too psychedelic!” vocalist/drummer Cody Bowles laughs. “It morphed into its own thing.”
Ritual I was born as an instrumental record that’s equal parts world music meditation, otherworldly spirituality and knotted polyrhythms. “We wanted to show a different side of the band and stretch out in ways we never had before,” says Bowles, who studied West African music at university. “It’s still a Crown Lands record, but it’s markedly and decidedly weird.”
Now signed to a label they say truly understands them, the duo started work on an ambitious three-album arc. It started with Ritual I and II, both launched in July 2025 – they had so much fun making the first, they were excited to push its boundaries even further with a second. It will conclude with Apocalypse, a more traditional Crown Lands album, in early 2026. “It’s the best thing we’ve ever done,” reveals Comeau.
But they didn’t have such grandiose plans when they first stepped into Chalet Studios – all they wanted was a little fun with no strings attached. “The Rituals were a really great source of escapism for us,” says Comeau. “It took away the pressure of having to write a concise and crispy prog rock album that still feels radio-friendly and interesting.”
“We were in uncharted territory,” adds Bowles. “We were letting our creativity take control. When we go into that world, it’s like we were finding the fun of it and what had made us hyped about music in the first place. Ritual II was written and recorded in about two weeks – it was beautiful and spontaneous and we were able to be creative in a completely different way.
“We wrote The Serpent on the first day. An engineer had brought all these cool African percussion pieces over, and as people were setting up I grabbed a log drum and started playing this little thing that became the anchor point. We started layering on top of it, working by the seat of our pants. So half of it was true improvisation, the other half was arrangement. The psilocybin was the glue.”
Spotify classes EPs as being less than six songs and less than 40 minutes long. How many albums fit that criteria?
Kevin Comeau
Ritual II saw them revisit the same template, but emphasises their prog influences during an inspired getaway. Comeau cites an example: “We were cutting one of the polyrhythms for Respite and Cody just started hitting this sound baffle, like, ‘We should have a rhythm like this,’ and I recorded it. We added some more percussion with djembe and darbuka, but we couldn’t find ways to replace that baffle.
“Lindsay Buckingham is my biggest influence as a producer. The main percussive elements on [Fleetwood Mac’s] Second Hand News is him slapping a leather chair – so we took influence from that.”
He continues: “There’s so much Cody on it where it’s all the ambient flutes and loud parts. And I got a lot more of my voice in a way that I didn’t on the first Ritual I because I wanted to stay out of the way a bit more. I think the guitars on Ritual II are a lot more angular and arpeggiated like King Crimson’s Discipline and Beat. They were really big inspirations for me.”
The two records were written knowingly against the grain of music industry trends. But for two musicians who see Close To The Edge and 2112 as pinnacles of songwriting, why bow to dwindling attention spans? “I think the way everything is structured these days, and the music industry being built around social media and streaming, there’s no way to win,” says Comeau.
“Whether it’s King Gizzard putting out 20 albums a year, or it’s some younger artist making thousands of dollars a week on TikTok, you can’t look at anyone else’s success and try and model yourself after it, because it doesn’t work. You just have to do what feels good to you and your gut at that time.”
One of the earliest songs I remember hearing is 2112… prog was a touchstone for how you could encapsulate a whole world in a song
Cody Bowles
To Comeau’s surprise, not everyone deemed a three-album concept suite career suicide. “No one we’ve talked to in the industry who’s way more experienced than we are has a clue how things are actually working, and how artists are becoming successful,” he says. “It’s not about quality any more; maybe it never was.
“We were crestfallen when we released [2021 EP] White Buffalo, which was a 32-minute record and the same length as Close To The Edge. Spotify classes EPs as being less than six songs and/or less than 40 minutes long. How many albums actually fit that criteria? Hemispheres would be classified as an EP today!”
The shifting of goalposts, while demoralising at first, soon affirmed the band’s need to dance to their own beat. For Bowles, the biggest Rush fan of the pair, it’s a strategy that harkens back to the majesty of an album that changed their lives. Crown Lands might never reach Rush’s lofty heights, but they’d love for their music to have a similar impact on the next generation of music lovers.
“One of the earliest songs I remember hearing is 2112,” Bowles says. I was a baby, and my dad would put it on for me. I grew up with that story. Then later, getting into Tolkien and Frank Herbert, and really seeing these beautiful worlds that people are able to create, prog was a touchstone for how you could encapsulate a whole world in a song.
“It inspired me to chase that – but tell our own stories, and build our own worlds. Prog, and those epic concept records, have had an immeasurable influence on me. It’s in everything that I do.”
Ritual I and II are on sale now.
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