A few select bands will ensure that hardcore stays culturally relevant. “Rohnert Park” puts the San Fran Bay area’s Ceremony in the vanguard. “Rohnert Park” is an event. It invokes a time when the boundaries of hardcore music were not yet clearly defined. Hardcore was still an adjective. The West Coast and Mid-West scenes were spilling over with legendary bands and classic albums. Hardcore Punk was yet to be assigned a formula. It just had to be intense, visceral, snotty, untamed, and real. “Rohnert Park” is all of the above.
Ceremony have been compared to Black Flag, the Cro-Mags, Joy Division, etc., etc. etc. While including Ceremony in such company is a well-intentioned compliment, trying to classify this band does a disservice to what Ceremony has accomplished with “Rohnert Park.” Fans of the Adolescents, TSOL, and other great 80′s hardcore music will find familiar territory — that’s true. But it’s not the music that is so familiar — it’s the wond’rous Anarchy that you felt when you listened to the Germs or (really early) Bad Religion for the first time. While Ceremony will easily draw comparisons to earlier hardcore outfits, they’re not just Black Flag or Dead Kennedy clones — they’re cut from the same cloth. They belong in the 80′s.
The idyllic calm portrayed on the album cover (inset) is destroyed with the screams of Sick, the second track of the album and its pacesetter. M.C.D.F. is a jumpy, old-school style punk track track about going to jail, which is always fun. (Songs about jail, not going to jail). Open Head is a a slower but no-less-intense chant anthem sing-along about a lovably creepy outcast. Night to Life is the closest thing you’ll find to a Punk traditional on “Rohnert Park” — loud, short, mean.
Back in ’84 encapsulates the mood of this album — it’s a snarling, spitting, sarcastic reminiscence of being flung from the womb into a soul-crushing, dangerous world. My only criticism of “Rohnert Park” is that Back in ’84 was not the first track, as it should have been. The album’s tone, attitude, and testicular fortitude are perfectly captured on this track. (“Back in ’84 I nearly choked on the u-cord/ ‘Til my dad came and cut me loose/ He said ‘The pain you feel today, it’ll never go away/ and the best way out is always through.’”) 
Besides being an intense, face-melting juggernaut of an album, “Rohnert Park” is also unpredictable and varied for a hardcore release. It surprises with slower tonal relief pieces like Into the Wayside (parts I, II, and III) and The Doldrums (Friendly City). You’ll find Into the Wayside at the beginning, middle, and end of the album. Into the Wayside Part II features a slower tempo and more intricate guitar solos, albeit played over an unidentified narrator’s recounting of an incident where his neighbor died on the bathroom floor while he unsuccessfully tried to help. Into the Wayside Part III ends the piece in a similar fashion, this time with mood music played over the chatter of television, disembodied voices, and police radio blurbs.
It gets annoying trying to describe Ceremony or their album “Rohnert Park” by referring to the sounds of other bands. It’s an easy way out and it wouldn’t result in an accurate description. I’ll describe it in a nutshell as follows — it’s a moody, mean, intense, aggressive hardcore album that will make your teeth rattle. (See — hardcore the adjective, not Hardcore the noun). “Rohnert Park” is a sick-ass album that could have been sold in the racks alongside any other legendary release of the last 3 decades. I think these guys are just going to get better. They’re going to release more albums and those albums might be technically superior or more elegantly produced than “Rohnert Park.” But the people who were on board when “Rohnert Park” came out are going to have a hard time accepting that this album can be one-upped, no matter how good any later releases get. This will be the fan favorite.
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