Ceremony
Rohnert Park LP

Raise the visor of your cap, and in the mirror, you unmistakably read the words Suicidal Maniac, you put on the sponge sock and pull it up to your knee, in your hand is your trusty skateboard battered from uneven sidewalks where the stickers of Black Flag and D.R.I. have faded over time. It seems like you’ve gone back to 1984, and indeed what the Ceremony present in their decadent ode to their hometown, Rohnert Park, is a return to a sound that takes you back to the roots of hardcore punk. If one didn’t know the release date, which marks 2010, placing a hand over your eyes not to seek clues, the mere sound ruins drag the mind into the depths of that sunny California made of stretches of arid asphalt, concrete, and scorching sand accompanying the days of fearless surfers, street artists, and skaters ready to dash along the coast. The atmosphere resurrects directly that mood of Attitude Adjustment or the offbeat punk rock of the Circle Jerks that when it gains momentum, ventures onto the scorched paths traced by the Accused or Cryptic Slaughter. Then it happens that now the Ceremony (whom I'll see on Saturday night) have literally taken their moniker to heart and have delved into the Joy Division-inspired post punk. This 5 years after Rohnert Park, initially driven by a desire to leave it all behind with hardcore irreverence: "Sick of drying up in the sun Sick of this island Sick of fun Sick of being sober Sick of starting over Sick of black flag Sick of cro mags Sick of the living Sick of people dying Sick of the buying Sick of trying Sick of television Sick of telephones Sick of homophobes Sick of condos Sick of the GOP Sick of liberals Sick of me Sick of obama Sick of head trauma So very tired of feeling sick Sick of living in america Sick of mass hysteria Sick of realism Sick of buddhism Sick of longboards Sick of hardcore Sick of baptists Sick of atheists Sick of police Sick of yuppies Sick of paying rent Sick of being bent Sick of hearing lies Sick of mankind."

The Ceremony do not try to sugarcoat the pill, Rohnert Park is a full-length album covered in bitterness and disillusionment that fiercely fuels Ross Farrar’s dirty and scowling scream. When the expressiveness varies from a full-bodied and abrasive scratch, it does so only to sarcastically indulge in playful and offbeat scansion. Who would have said that after a couple of years his vocal cords would find themselves flirting with Ian Curtis's inspiration. Here instead, there is only the relentless stop & go between exquisitely old-school riffs and a drum that boils beneath, ready to carve out its space with all the slowdowns and accelerations needed, through flashes of tupatupatupatupa, primordial blast beats, and sudden interruptions that help fuel the jagged schizophrenia of Ceremony. They set off by introducing us to their world filled with self-destruction and rebellion at the same time, against their own chains, against their condition, against being tired of remaining tied to the everyday life of Rohnert Park. After all, we are still in a hardcore punk record, right? The influence of thrash makes a distracted appearance, and episodes like the second chapter of the Trilogy of "into the Wayside" create the right caustic atmosphere. The dusty shroud raised by Ceremony hardly dissipates, and the cartridges are fired in sequence; crossing the two-minute mark accidentally more than once, in any case, it’s time well spent listening to guitars that go crazy and lay down frenetic and disorienting plots, with melodies and solos with a classical flavor. The perfect combination. It’s the perfect storm, where the bass neurotically sketches and sculpts the final strokes of the habitually apathetic scenario of the Californian quintet.

After half an hour, everything vanishes, but the impression that remains is that of having taken a heavy dive into the past, where the no-frills claustrophobia of punk prevailed and trainloads of anger crashed down on you, one after another, ready to shatter. The only thing left is to leave the house on that skateboard, wandering through anonymous neighborhoods that seem created with a photocopier: garden, garage, car, garden, garage, car, garden, garage, car, repeating endlessly, trying to look beyond the sunny horizon and instead seeing the usual calm flatness that somehow needed to be shaken, read "Rohnert Park LP" for that matter. That's all there is here, without grand words, straightforward and genuinely home-delivered.