Rohnert Park, CA · post-punk · hardcore punk

Ceremony

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Bay Area band who started at powerviolence speed and walked themselves, album by album, into cold and excellent post-punk — one of hardcore's great evolutions.

Ceremony formed in Rohnert Park, California, in 2005, first under the name Violent World before settling on Ceremony, borrowed from a New Order song title. The band's early records, including the EP Ruined and the full-length Violence Violence, dealt in fast, abrasive hardcore rooted in powerviolence, with Ross Farrar shouting over short, violent songs.

Still Nothing Moves You (2008) kept that intensity and reached Billboard's Heatseekers chart, while Rohnert Park (2010) moved toward post-hardcore. After signing to Matador Records in 2011, the band released Zoo, a rawer garage-punk record modeled on Wire's Pink Flag, before The L-Shaped Man (2015) and In the Spirit World Now (2019) built songs from repetition, cold guitar tone and drum-machine-like rhythms.

By the 2010s the band's reference points had shifted decisively toward late-1970s and early-1980s post-punk and synth-driven new wave, with The L-Shaped Man drawing frequent comparisons to Joy Division and In the Spirit World Now, released on Relapse Records, leaning into new wave textures. The tension and brevity of the band's hardcore beginnings never entirely disappeared.

Ceremony has named the Ventures, Joy Division, T.S.O.L., Christian Death and the Beach Boys as key influences, alongside an affection for Oasis, the Violent Femmes, Prince, the Ramones and the Cure. The current lineup pairs Farrar with guitarists Anthony Anzaldo and Andy Nelson, bassist Justin Davis and drummer Jake Casarotti.

The gradual, deliberate nature of that evolution is a large part of what the band is known for, and its live sets pull material from every stage of the catalogue, from the earliest hardcore through the current post-punk material.

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post-punkhardcore punk