Ceremony

Ceremony can’t stop. Can’t stop pushing forward. Can’t stop changing shape. Across two decades, the California-born hardcore outfit has earned its standing as one of punk’s most adaptable and unflinching bands, always ready to meet the moment without surrendering its principles. True to form, Ceremony’s seventh album, Tell Me Your Dream pushes the group’s punk-forged intensity all the way to the fore, capturing the quintet at its most expressive, most expansive, and most timely.

“We’re living in an era of mass uncertainty,” says Ceremony vocalist Ross Farrar. “In punk, I don’t see how you can’t respond. It’s taken over our lives in so many different ways — economically, politically, spiritually. We want people to wake up and get into what’s happening.”

Ferociously alert, Tell Me Your Dream reunites Ceremony — Farrar, guitarist-keyboardist Anthony Anzaldo, guitarist Andy Nelson, bassist Justin Davis and drummer Jake Casarotti — with producer John Reis for ten songs of searing breadth. That means everything from bristling hardcore to moody post-punk — all while taking fundamental inspiration from Discharge, Crass, and other anarcho-punk troupes that first helped certain members of Ceremony find their own political voices back when they were teenagers. The result is a culmination of the band’s 21 years together, if not some kind of riddle: Ceremony knows how to make a return-to-form sound like evolution — and vice versa.

Equally loud and clear is the fact that Ceremony isn’t hesitating to raise its voice at a moment when the underground has grown strangely quiet. “Why aren’t punk bands actually saying the word ‘Palestine’ on their records?” asks Ceremony guitarist Andy Nelson. “We didn’t want to make anything that felt light, or empty, or apolitical. Our intent is to not waste anyone’s time, and to encourage people to think about what they settle for.”

On Tell Me Your Dream, you’ll hear Palestine cited over the ferocious bounce of “Madness,” a post-punky indictment of war’s obscenity — and the obscene amounts of cash required to wage it. But if you listen closely, you may also hear Farrar working to reconcile issues of broadscale sociopolitical violence with his most intimate personal struggles. “If you write a political song, it can have this black-and-white effect,” Farrar says. “I think Ceremony is good at walking the line on that. This album is very much about the inside and outside battling, and trying to find a way.”

Hard subjects, harsh sounds. Tell Me Your Dream finds a steadying hand in producer John Reis, a punk lifer whose eclectic noisemaking in Rocket from the Crypt, Hot Snakes and other legendary bands runs in parallel to Ceremony’s multitudes. After working on Ceremony’s acclaimed 2015 album, The L-Shaped Man, Reis maintains a unique perspective on the quintet — as a hardcore punk band, as participants in the greater California rock-and-roll tradition, and as friends. “John sort of joined the band on this one,” says guitarist-keyboardist Anthony Anzaldo. “We could not respect him more as a guitarist, as a singer, as a songwriter. He understands what it’s like to be in every position. So we really gave him the keys.”

Together, they’re unafraid to shift gears. Within the space of 30 minutes, Tell Me Your Dream revisits all previous eras of the greater Ceremony arc, with each track gaining intensity as it plays off the prior. Check out how the anarcho scorch marks of “Other Hells” give way to the deep-pocketed groove of the aforementioned “Madness,” followed by the jet-black jangle of “Dark Summer,” a post-punk rumination during which Farrar reminds us, “You only hit bottom when you stop digging.” Such wild swings — from rage to beauty and back again — might feel familiar to attendees of Anzaldo’s Homesick music festival where Ceremony’s incandescent headlining performance in 2019 seemed to channel preceding sets from electro-punks Cold Cave and avantgarde harpist Mary Lattimore at once.

All of this is made possible through an enduring sense of trust forged within the band — no surprise considering Ceremony’s roots date all the way back to a grade-school friendship between Anzaldo and Farrar. “We’re bound together like family,” says Anzaldo. “Our relationships are beyond the band. Ceremony is going to live no matter what. We’ve shifted into this dynamic where the choice isn’t ours anymore.”

Deep connections in a shallow world. A clear sense of purpose in uncertain times. These are the reasons Ceremony continues to grow, to expand, to adapt, to endure. This band can’t stop. And it won’t. To meet the moment, you have to be there for it.