REVIEW: ‘Tell Me Your Dream’ is Ceremony’s Best Album Yet
REVIEW
REVIEW
☆ BY ALEAH ANTONIO ☆
Martin-Sorrondeguy
IT’S BEEN A WEEK SINCE ROHNERT PARK BAND CEREMONY RELEASED TELL ME YOUR DREAM—their first new album since 2019. Finally, the consensus is that it might be their best album yet. It feels like their first record in over a decade that hasn’t been controversial with critics and fans. Ceremony blends their roots in punk with their modern post-punk direction, creating a fresh comeback that feels as original as it does inspired.
For those who don’t know, Ceremony began as a group of friends—Ross Farrar, Anthony Anzaldo, Justin Davis, Jake Cazarotti and eventually Ryan Mattos—who loved punk and hardcore. They released Violence Violence in 2006 (in which the band celebrated its 20th anniversary not too long ago), followed up by oft-forgotten Still Nothing Moves You in 2008 and their beloved Rohnert Park in 2010. After signing to Matador Records in 2011, Ceremony quickly became one of the most popular powerviolence bands of their time. Not that one could even call powerviolence “popular,” let alone hardcore, which didn’t reach popularity until Turnstile released Glow On in 2021. Violence Violence and Rohnert Park were the two albums that ended up defining the band for the rest of their career, and are the two that fans cherish the most.
Funnily enough, each record that followed Rohnert Park would get judged on how much it sounded like (or didn’t sound like) Rohnert Park. The farther they deviated, the worse the criticism got. 2012’s Zoo wasn’t bad—the band had “cleaned up” a little—as they began to slow their pace. 2015’s The L Shaped Man had convinced fans that Ceremony completely lost the plot. People called the album a dull impersonation of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis (as if they weren’t one of Ceremony’s biggest influences), a “cliche” breakup record led by Farrar and Anzaldo, and was deemed too slow and unforgettable by their fans. Then the band released In The Spirit World Now in 2019, perking ears with comparisons to Devo and New Order, but seemingly never touching hearts like they did in 2010.
Here lies the issue—whereas bands are usually celebrated for experimentation and never making the same record twice, Ceremony gets crucified for it. I have a suspicion that it’s because the hardcore scene isn’t necessarily forgiving. Hardcore fans love when two records sound the same. Now that the genre has hit the mainstream, lots of people are quick to call out bands as sellouts and traitors for making their music more dynamic and personal. Frankly, it doesn’t seem like Ceremony gives a fuck. Even as far as 2008, Farrar has said that he doesn’t really have an opinion of the hardcore scene. “We don’t really listen to as much hardcore as people think we do,” Farrar said in a blog interview, “We kind of have weird inspirations cause we all listen to…uh…wacky stuff.”
Here comes Tell Me Your Dream, with its thesis: “Ceremony can’t stop changing shape” . They’ve never stopped being punks. Just listen to “Other Hells,” a two minute, aggressive ripper, or “Death Destruction Mayhem,” where Farrar barks, “Fighting makes you feel strong / Killing really turns you on.” Neither are Ceremony ready to put down their love of post-punk. Anzaldo plays with pedals and synths on tracks like “Madness” and “Deep Down Where I Belong,” sounding like they pulled the tracks from a different decade
Tell Me Your Dream blends everything that Ceremony is—sincere, spiritual, defiant, full of rage—so seamlessly, that listeners throw all comparisons out the window. The album makes it so easy for the listener to be present. Each song is engaging, placed in a way where you don’t know where the band is going to head next. Opening with “Prograde,” the steady bass and guitar riffs tease the listener the same way that “Into the Wayside Part I/Sick” does. The album is full of highs and lows—never expected and never boring.
It wouldn’t be a Ceremony record if it didn’t also come with a message. “We’re living in a time that feels abject in a way, and it is not as intimate or as personal as I’d like it to be,” Farrar told New Noise Magazine, “When you ask someone ‘Tell me your dream,’ really what you are saying is tell me what you’re subconsciously thinking about. Tell me something that is deep inside of you…”
It’s obvious that one of the things they’re dreaming about is a world that treats us better than it does right now. They’re tired of the one percent pitting communities against each other, as Farrar chants “there’s no them, there’s no other, there’s just us” on “Other Hells.” He wishes better for Palestine on “Madness” with “the beach filled with smiles and lovely days,” and references the law of the goring ox—if an animal kills a human, the animal must die, to prevent harming another human again.
The album closer, “Paradise,” is a dedication to the late Ryan Carson, a poet and activist who tragically died in 2023. The song takes a simple shape as Farrar sings, “There's so much I have to tell you / But we'll have to wait till the next life / Take me to paradise, I'll look for my way out.” It’s an earnest way to close the record, as Ceremony seldom leaves room for apathy in their music. Tell Me Your Dream is an album that has it all.
Martin-Sorrondeguy
