Thursday, June 17, 2010

ceremony - rohnert park :: record review

ceremony return with their third full length rohnert park. visually speaking, the album represents this pseudo-perfect suburban world. the packaging was deliberately designed to be clean, white, perfect. the font is crisp, and bold. but underneath the surface of rohnert park's perfect suburban neighborhood, we find a group of pretty disillusioned sick kids. Farrar sings, "sick of paying rent/sick of being bent/sick of hearing lies/sick of mankind," and if that's not a cry for change i'm not sure what is. the doldrums (friendly city) takes the album to a much slower pace. the albums if framed by the intro to the wayside three part series. the second half of the album sees the band retracing hardcore's steps with back in 84' where Farrar screams "twenty five years later everything is the same/a civilization gone deaf-mute." All around this is a great album. The running theme is a fear of suburbia - a fear of being normal. Essentially getting older is scary, and they capture that perfectly here.

rating 13/13

No comments:

Post a Comment