Coming off consecutive weekend performances at Coachella, Cali punk-and-hardcore vets Ceremony have escaped the desert, dusted themselves off and delivered their first song in four years, a unity anthem called “Other Hells.”
The song is the first to come from the Rohnert, California-formed crew since their “Vanity Spawned by Fear” / “California Poppy” single in 2022, and leans into the more street punkin’, gob-spittin’ edge of the band’s Rohnert Park era, compared to later synthier efforts. A press release indeed notes that this is Ceremony “flexing their hardcore muscle once again.”
Vocalist Ross Farrar explained in a statement that the song is a reaction to the “ongoing rise in politics that lean on tribalism and polarizing rhetoric in an attempt to divide,” ultimately noting that his cries are “aiming to unify… using punk’s great liberatory force: the slam.”
He barks mantra-like across the mean-muggin’ hardcore riffs, and adds that “Other Hells” acts as a “meditation on the dualistic arts and the interplay of opposing forces in our lives: awake/asleep, physical/spiritual, inhale/exhale.”
“This is a constant theme in the work of Ceremony; beauty juxtaposed with the intensity of aggressive music, seeking to create a single, cohesive work through audible, visual, and structural elements.”
You can hear for yourselves up above, courtesy of Relapse Records.
While Ceremony issued their Live at the Hollywood Palladium concert LP earlier this year, the band have not delivered a studio full-length since 2020’s In the Spirit World Now.