Ceremony- Rohnert Park EP: Sick

Ceremony will be releasing their Rohnert Park album in June and as a preview they have put out this single. The A side is a song called "Sick" which will appear on the forthcoming album and after starting out with a menacing intro it stays at a mid tempo pace with vocalist Ross Farrar snarling about everything that he is "Sick of " fromRepublicans, liberals, Baptists, atheists, and Buddhists to Black Flag and the Cro Mags. In a strange way this song is pretty catchy despite the fact that it sort of just drones along. While Ceremony command an extremely loyal following and are regarded as a sort of cutting edge band, this is not entirely unfamiliar territory. This is not to say that the song is not rocking or that they are somehow undeserving of their popularity, but it's just hard to put a finger on what it is about Ceremony that makes so many kids gravitate towards them so rabidly. They do successfully engineer songs that beg for people to react with heavy mosh parts that often turn into fast and chaotic thrash parts a la Infest or Negative FX and snotty vocals that have angry sing along parts, so in this sense it is easy to see how the formula translates well to live performances, but aside from their approach to non self promotion it is hard to figure out what is so unique about this band that makes them speak to the young generation of Hardcore kids on such an intense level.

The B side is a sort of sequel to "This Is My War" off of "Violence Violence" called "Life As A War." This is the sort of stuff that got the band attention in the first place and attracted both fans of Powerviolence and more traditional Hardcore sounds. The sequel is just as intense as the original and it's definitely safe to say that Ceremony's momentum is only picking up at this point.

 

-Ditch
Big Wheel Asst. Editor
 

 

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