Owned since: 2015
Genre: Throwback 80s hardcore
Where I bought it: A temporary store annex a hardcore distro run
Year: 2010
Label/pressing: Bridge Nine, Light green transparent vinyl
I think this is the first record that were covering that is a huge personal one for me. Like I noted before I was never a guy that really belonged to any scenes beside well the hardcore-punk scene. Since my mid teens that always been the weird rock in my taste and it makes up a fair bit of my record collection. I think of the 5 shelves it covers it nearly covers a full shelf, the only genre to do so. It’s funny to look back at also. In 2010 I was listening to allot of hardcore-punk but mostly obscure 7inch releases on labels like Deranged and scene favorites like the noise-rock based Drunkdriver and Nails’s grindcore masterpiece Unsilent Death. Right in the middle of the years where I used to make my yearly pilgrimage to Ieper Hardcore Fest in the middle of nowhere Belgium to watch a whole lot of old and new. Here’s the 2010 line-up
Still I keep quite update with hardcore punk stuff but it has become more running stuff that interests me. Still when Rohnert Park released I was 18 and too be honest a bit of a brat. Living in the Netherlands makes it very easy to go to shows by train which I was doing the years before that but now I could really stand everywhere where I wanted and for sure did. 2010 was the year where I went to around 120 different shows from massive festival but mostly weird basement squat shows. Absolute highlight being a Ceremony show in Dynamo which was in the youth center’s weird basement venue. Complete chaos in a room that holds around 250 people and was sold out with people endless jumping and launching of each-other. Got a feet in the head which led to a heavy effusion of blood beside my eye which I needed to go to my job and school with which was fun. But mostly one of the best hardcore-punk shows I ever seen, the band’s blasting through Rohnert park and their (pretty classic) Violence Violence LP.
Rohnert Park was released on Bridge Nine, mostly home to cleaner metal-core influenced acts like Defeater but it’s mostly a massive ode to 80s hardcore. Gone is mostly the power-violence of the debut but the band burns here through a sound that sounds somewhere R.K.L.’s skatepunk and D-beat. Heavy side influences from post-punk also before the band went fully on that with follow up Zoo. Which is a fucking great fit. No thing of originality here just 35 minutes of suburbia anger that is a near parody of it’s subject matter. Ross Farrar’s shouting about how sick he is of everything feels much more acted then the 80s kids did but when you do it lovingly like here it just works. Even more with the weird slow interludes of the into the wayside part’s with the first one being a bass led in to classic skate-punk throwback Sick, the second one being a near post-rock song before going into guitar solos and the third one recalling 90s grunge.
‘Everyday i’m suffering from terminal aggression’ gets sneered on Terminal Addiction which feels like a suburban teen typing angry on a forum board. Even down to the cover the band knows very well what their doing; A kid in a minor threat sweater skateboarding past a very American house which of-course got the flag handing out and the flowers by the window. It seems to poke fun at the endless Suburban aggression mostly the LA hardcore-punk scene spew out. But it also just covers the boredom of being a touring band done supporting their last record which is tired of playing the same old songs. This is the last pure hardcore-punk album Ceremony did and that is even a stretch. The influences of this one are all over the place; 90s radio-grunge, trash-metal, 80’s skate-punk and allot of early NYC hardcore aggression.
There’s a interesting note about a bunch of late 20/early 30 somethings releasing this record which is very teen lyric themed but I think it is great for that. It’s very much a ode to a genre that is very much immature and never really grew up, at Ieper fest I used to see 45 somethings with their reunited bands rail against not being allowed to skate. It’s wonderfully corny and I never wanted it any other way. So open up a bad six pack of beer, grab a skateboard and scream along with being sick of all this shit. But don’t forgot your alarm is going at 7:30 next morning so hit the hay at the right time.