Ceremony - Rohnert Park (2010)

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Rohnert Park
Rohnert-Park-LP.jpg


Band - Ceremony
Genre - Hardcore Punk

Rohnert Park is an album that celebrates the best parts of the classic hardcore sound while bringing some adventurous and unexpected material, making this album exciting.

Ceremony throws curveballs that don't feel like curveballs at all. They drop in unusual elements, but these strange pieces feel completely natural alongside their more traditional material for some reason.

The album opens with "Into the Wayside," with a mellow surf rock like instrumental (a recurring thing throughout both sides of the LP), but as soon as you get caught up in the surf rock type of sound, Ceremony snaps into attack mode with the vicious "Sick," where vocalist Ross Farrar just spits out what's been bugging him........ which is pretty much everything. While repetition can be the death of a lot of hardcore, but Ceremony builds upon the recurring structure, increasing the intensity with each refrain, until the song basically collapses in upon itself, which is what early Black Flag
did.

Just when you think that Rohnert Park will be a relentless pummeling, it snaps back into the "Into the Wayside" theme, and drops in a vocal clip where an audibly shaken man talks about his confrontation with death at an early age. What makes the album so inviting is that while the band uses traditional minute-thirty screamers as guideposts, they also drop in some slow-paced hypnotic numbers that recall Nirvana as well as Joy Division.

Through out the sonic assult vocalist Ross Farrar spouts some intensely personal lyrics.

Overall, I thought Rohnert Park was an interesting, creative album, having a
somewhat different sound from the hardcore punk I am used to.
It isn't like some of the other modern hardcore punk that makes me want to listen to the original bands. This is a rare modern hardcore punk album (most of them Ceremony albums) that I will listen to and not want to change to the original bands.
10/10







 

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