HYLI Vol. XL - Ceremony and NONE
The HYLI Boys are Back. Patrick sends Andy his favorite hardcore album of the last 15 years and Andy sends Patrick a 2019 black metal album
Is that my music I hear? That’s right, motherfuckers, it’s your boy Patrick. I’m back. Thanks to our friend Thomas for filling in the last two weeks but that pop-punk shit is OVER WITH. Let’s get back to uhhh oh god “depressive black metal” and “whatever genre I send Andy.” How have y’all been? It’s been good over here around these parts: I went to my cousin’s wedding in Colorado and road-tripped and hiked my way to Utah for a week (yay), I released an EP of music songs last week (Yay!), and I’m having a baby girl in six months (YAY). What a time to be Me. I barely listened to any music during that time and only really listened to House of the Dragon podcasts because I’m a massive dork dweeb. Anyways, I’m glad to be back and I’m happy to be metal-pilled by my friend Andy again. Love y’all and, as always, Hope You Like It. (Andy: You can tell Pat was away and itching to come back cause he wrote like 5x as many words as me lol)
Ceremony - Rohnert Park
Patrick: Not to be a massive cliche dork loser more than I already am but I think it’s safe for me to say hardcore (or punk rock or whatever) changed my life. To flashback to the year 2006, we were in a pre-Obama time and I was living in Springfield, Missouri of all god-forsaken places just playing football and baseball and being Angry. The only music I really listened to was Oasis, Pearl Jam and the Strokes. You could argue that’s still basically the only music I listen to but, as a 16-year-old who, again, was Angry, that shit was simply not going to cut it. I decided at that time that I wasn’t going to be a metal guy (Andy: bad move), I was going to be a punk and hardcore guy (Andy: you can be both). I dialed up my internet connection (literal dial-up) to ask the Google machine “what is hardcore music?” because I heard someone at school that I didn’t talk to ask a friend of mine if they “liked hardcore music like Killswitch Engage” (wtf) (Andy: lol).
Despite this odd misunderstanding of genres on my fellow classmate’s part, I found Black Flag’s Damaged through my Googling and, hoo boy, it’s been a ride ever since (Andy: “good band” dot gif). Again, that specific album is probably a cliched choice, but I can trace listening to that album directly to using the internet to find similar, newer bands that sounded like Black Flag, to finding websites like AbsolutePunk and Punknews.org, to writing for my friend Andy’s old music website in the 2010s (Andy: 🤙), to moving to Gainesville, Florida to work for our friend Thomas at a punk record label, to moving to South Carolina because I was burnt out and jaded by The Man, to meeting my wife in school and hiking and having a baby. Thanks Henry Rollins!
Anyways, this newsletter is about Ceremony and not Black Flag. About a half-decade after finding Damaged and feeling like hardcore was “My Thing” but not really having a modern band that I felt super attached to, Ceremony dropped Rohnert Park. If we’re rounding up all the albums of all genres from the 2010s, Rohnert Park is in the top 10 for me and it isn’t #10. Just a perfect mixture of the aggressive hardcore roots the band began in, the punk rock sound that they were clearly edging towards but not fully at yet, and the post-punk sound they would later arrive at. Bands in hardcore rarely have the drive or ambition to write a song as catchy as “The Doldrums,” (honestly, probably my least favorite track here) (Andy: oh) or as aggressive and fun as “Terminal Addiction” (my favorite track here). I love that, for a band who can go fast as hell, one of the heaviest songs on the album is one that kinda trudges along at a mid-tempo pace.
While I think people underrate the band’s later post-punk albums, there’s something undeniable about the riffs and vocals on Rohnert Park. Ross Farrar’s vocals and Anthony Anzaldo’s riffs on “Moving Principle” sync up in a way a hardcore band hadn’t really done since Keith Morris and Greg Ginn on “Nervous Breakdown.” The influence of this album on hardcore afterward really cannot be understated. We’re a few months removed from Sound and Fury 2022 being one of the biggest moments for hardcore possibly ever. How many bands on that lineup wouldn’t be around without Ceremony or, more specifically, Rohnert Park? Would there be a Drain? What about Koyo or Scowl? I can tell you one thing there wouldn’t be without that album: this newsletter. Take that how you will. I love this album. Perfect record. Hope You Like It.
Andy: Hardcore rules, man. Pat is (unfortunately) right that most people are either a hardcore or a metal kid (imo this is dumb you can 100% be both but this is not the time or place for that essay). The sorting hat puts you in your house based on if your friends first showed you Black Flag or Black Sabbath and you’re set for life (or for me, System of a Down had the coolest album art at Best Buy) (Patrick: Black Sabbath is my GOATed band lol oops). As a metal guy I got into hardcore later in life but I’m still very much about it.
Rohnert Park is a fantastic hardcore album. Tracks like “All The Time” and “The Pathos” just get it, man. These hit me the exact same way a good metal album does. Bang your head. Swing your arms. Break something. I have to imagine the end of “Open Head” is just fuck as all heck live. I actually loved the weird “The Doldrums” track (Patrick: maybe you’ll like this album). Something about it really got me good. The moments when it slows down work really well for me also.
The “Into the Wayside” tracks are the hardcore equivalent of metal bands using serial killer spoken words. We are one in the same (Patrick: upsetting you think this).
The entire album wants to make you go out and fuck shit up man. I’m jacked up and ready to break something. They all go hard. Seems like it should be a modern-day punk classic (Patrick: congrats to us on making Rohnert Park a classic). Let’s go. I Loved It.
NONE - Damp Chill of Life
Andy: Damp Chill of Life is, for me, a perfect album. I’m a sucker for many bands that fall under the Depressive Black Metal label. A dumb sub-genre name (Patrick: no kidding) but a lot of bands in that space do a great job with atmospheric black metal. And to be fair, NONE really nails the “depressive” descriptor here.
Damp Chill of Life is just a smothering 40-ish minutes of ambient atmospheric black metal. He/She/They (the musicians keep themselves anonymous so no one knows who or what is behind the music) (Patrick: why are metal bands always doing this no one cares) has such a great ear for these exhilarating soundscapes. This album takes on a more gritty, lo-fi sound compared to previous albums which I’m a fan of. A nearly perfect combination of ambient and metal sections.
The piano on “Cease” makes me want to end it all… but in like… a good way… you know? (Patrick: I do not). Hope You Like It.
Patrick: I want to be clear from the jump: I liked this album on the songs where they chose to play music. When bands play music? There’s nothing like it, folks. My biggest gripe with this album is that, for an album that’s 44 minutes long, they only really seem to have written three actual songs: the title track, “It’s Painless to Let Go” and “A Chance I’d Never Have.”
Most of the other tracks do have some music to them, but usually coming after, like, three to four minutes of the pianist playing like three notes over and over (Andy: it’s called a vibe, you wouldn’t get it). It sounds pretty enough and is reminiscent of some of the more instrumental Trent Reznor stuff but, ultimately, not really what I want. Like, I would prefer if they either a) just went fully ambient or b) went fully metal. Pick one!
Since I want to be nice and not annoying, I’m going to focus on the songs where they play music. The title track is that kind of song that black metal bands do a lot where the word “epic” comes to mind, with sicko drums, great vocals, and soaring lead guitar lines playing over a wall of distortion. I love that sound so much and NONE does it well here. “It’s Painless to Let Go,” lets the distortion hit you in the chest almost immediately, sounding like it’s ripping through your speaker, with vocals buried in the background in a great, layered kind of way. And then “A Chance I’d Never Have,” begins with almost a “Fade to Black” sounding acoustic-guitar part before moving into Sunbather-but-better territory, and then ending with some Trent Reznor piano stuff. Ultimately, I think that’s the way I prefer bands in this space to work. If you’re going to throw those ambient parts in, let them end the song, instead of being the focal point for minutes at a time before you get to anything interesting. I’m not trying to be mean. I Did Like It but I think I only really liked the songs where they tried to be a metal band. I’ll probably save those on a playlist and let the uhh songs where it has spoken word serial killer stuff (why do you send me bands that do this so much) (Andy: It’s a good bit, more bands should do it) go by the wayside.