Several times during Ceremony's headlining performance at le Poisson Rouge, there is a sudden flash mob on the stage, you can't see the band for the people, as though everybody has decided to stage dive at the same time. And. Just as fast. It is over, and the band gets back to business of being a premium West Coast grandchild of all those SST bands from the 80s. It is almost performance art, a wickedly effective way to really have audience and band unite in a visual flameout.
But as for the rest of the set… ceremony open like a dark Goth band and soon morph into hardcore with one foot in the past and two (I know) in the future. Lead by a Charlie Sheen lookalike and an obvious old pro, Ceremony turn the audience on, and off at will, Sheen Junior (Ross Farrar) turning every other line into a singalong till he gets tired of it and starts in on their first Matador Release, Zoom -out March 5th.
The band is pretty damn good at what they do, the sound can get achingly loud, and they can follow four excellent hardcore band, including the very popular Pissed Jeans, and maintain control of the situation.
Actually, control might be what this is really about: when you get as good as ceremony, you can manipulate an audience and that's exactly what Farrar does as he leads his band through highlights from their two albums, the powerful Rohnert Park and the overwhelming earlier album Violence Violence.
The audience, which thinned out a bit after Pissed Jeans, got a lesson in raw power but also a lesson in the beatific nature of hardcore: the jaggedness of English Oi mixed with the speed and textures of the initial hardcore movement and a leader who seemed o maintain above what was happening as he dirtied himself.