I could easily give Ceremony's latest album a token crappy review because quite frankly I find this band a bit too overrated to garner an actual unbiased review from me. I really hate to be "that guy" but I haven't enjoyed anything from this North Bay based hardcore unit since their demo and subsequent 7". Everything afterwards just came at me like a whirling dervish of manic spastic hardcore with the bass pushed way too far in the mix and the lyrics being screeched out to like a rat with its head stuck in a trap with some other maniac yelling at the captured rodent. I like the overall forcefulness of Ceremony but thought too many songs sounded like every other song. Also, those songs were either played mind warping fast or brain numbing slow with neither having a decent grip on transition. It all came to me as big bloody mess of "fuck you's" and other nasty diatribes.
It wasn't until I saw Ceremony this past Summer that it all finally began to sink in. I still don't think that Ceremony is the greatest thing since the proverbial sliced bread, but I do understand why the kids love them so much. Ceremony represents to kids what bands like Void, Poison Idea, SSD, Black Flag ,and Minor Threat meant to me when I heard them while being a fat, zit faced nerd in a small town high school in mid-America. Ceremony is an ugly sounding band and you know something; that's basically what hardcore is all about.
Hardcore was never supposed to be about music that your parents liked. It surely isn't the music that jocks will jam while chasing you down and tossing empty cans of Budweiser at you. This is music for the unloved, the unruly, and the extremely pissed. Still Nothing Moves You is the soundtrack to every girl that rejected you, to every cop that got in your face for skateboarding, to every fight you had with your parents, teachers, and classmates. This is the soundtrack to every bullshit church function you sat through and wondered why you are being forced to except this as the truth.
Still Nothing Moves You is still an album with the bass so far up in the mix it takes over every song. The vocals are still those of screeching mammals and the clinically insane. The songs still either go really fast or really slow. Sometimes it's even hard to categorize these as song at all as they are more like just sudden bursts of pissed off energy played through musical instruments. But you know something; it is still hardcore in its rarest and purest form.
