Over the past fifteen years, California punk band Ceremony has come to embody the spirit of constant evolution that makes music so exciting. Named for a song recorded by Joy Division and re-recorded for New Order’s debut single, it was a surprising reference point for a band whose debut LP, Violence Violence, spanned twenty tracks in as many minutes and was a blistering, non-stop auditory assault of pure punk that was far more Black Flag than it was ‘Blue Monday’. But three records and ten years later, the homage has taken on new meaning, and turned out to be a delightful self-fulfilling prophecy.
Beginning with 2015’s The L-Shaped Man, the band made their own 90-degree turn into new territory, taking their punk pedigree and channeling it into a sound that called back heavily to Joy Division, New Order, and similar New Wave artists of the 80s. Frontman Ross Farrar’s voice sounded eerily like the late Ian Curtis on tracks like ‘The Separation’ and, with their latest release, In the Spirit World Now, Ceremony’s evolution into a fully-realized synth-driven band seems to be complete.
While Farrar’s powerful voice remains the a constant grounding point, the two ends of the spectrum are nearly unidentifiable as the same band, making Ceremony a true curio in music, as one of the few groups that has transformed itself completely while remaining fully committed to the execution of each idea.
Opening a night at Boston’s Royale club ahead of local stalwarts American Nightmare, Ceremony had the glossy club floor alive with dancing as much as it was with moshing. In keeping with their tourmates’ milieu though, the California five-piece emphasized their hardcore beginnings. Just one song into the night, Farrar descended from the stage and climbed up the barrier as the band began ‘Pressure’s On’.
He was met with a tidal wave of weight from the audience slamming against the metal divider. Despite being a bicoastal bill, Boston fans were positively rabid for Ceremony, the melee amping up even further for the next track, ‘I Want to Put This to an End’, an interminable spray of Narragansett and PBR flying overhead, coating Farrar, the photo pit, and the forefront of the stage as the first eager crowd-surfers began to soar as well. The audience fed off that raw aggression throughout the night, especially the mantric cries of ‘Open Head’ and the catharsis of ‘Kersed’.
The band’s morphology is a testament to the notion that intensity and heart are the key elements to good music, and Ceremony have always had those in spades, even as they’ve expressed themselves quite differently across album cycles. Songs like ‘Turn Away the Bad Thing’ still feature aggressive bass lines, now backed by equally-punchy synths that add a layer of depth to the band’s songwriting. ‘Never Gonna Die Now’, guttural and unhinged, compresses a load of emotion into just a minute’s length, recalling when the band performed the same feat with many tracks from Violence Violence.
It’s a refreshing contrast throughout the night to hear Farrar switch between his wild scream and his singing voice. Guitarist Anthony Anzaldo gets into the groove of things as well, whether he’s licking the neck of his guitar or pirouetting away from his keyboard at the end of a song. Jake Casarotti and Justin Davis hold the low end of each song together on drums and bass, whether it’s the frantic pounding of a hit from the Rohnert Park EP, named for the band’s California hometown, or the subtler work underlying the slow burn of ‘Presaging the End’. And stage-left, Andy Nelson works the crowd throughout the night, nimbly launching himself into the air during ‘Pressure’s On’.
Ceremony exemplify what it means to continually grow as a band and not capitulate to the temptation to simply repeat past successes. Musically and lyrically more complex than ever, it’s hard to witness the duality of Ceremony in person and not be impressed by their trajectory, and wonder where that arc will take them in this next decade. “Desire – it’ll never stop,” says Farrar on the title track of their latest album, amid soaring gothic synths. And as to the band’s penchant for reinvention, it seems that same principle applies.
Review and Photos by Collin Heroux
