Sold Date: March 8, 2016
Start Date: May 29, 2015
Final Price: $23.93 (USD)
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Ceremony - L-Shaped Man (Seafoam Vinyl) [Vinyl New]

Label: MATADOR--ADA--
Format: LP
Release Date: 19 May 2015

The Item is brand new and unplayed. If you check out and pay before 1PM Eastern (excluding weekend and holidays) we will prepare and ship out your order the same business day. Expected ship time may vary and is based on seller's order cut-off time.

Limited seafoam colored vinyl LP pressing. Ceremony's fifth studio album, The L-Shaped Man, uses singer Ross Farrar's recent breakup as a platform to explore loneliness and emotional weariness, but it is by no means a purely sad album. Rather than look inward, Farrar uses his experience to write about what it means to go through something heavy and come out the other side a different person. In order to tell Farrar's story, Ceremony has almost completely stripped back the propulsive hardcore of their previous records, turning every angry outburst into simmering despair. "We've always tried to be minimalists in writing, even if it's loud or fast or abrasive," says lead guitarist Anthony Anzaldo. "It's really intense when I hear it. Not in a way where you turn everything up to ten. Things are so bare, you're holding this one note for so long and you don't now where it's going-to me, that's intensity." That intensity is apparent on "Exit Fears," the first full song on the record. It meticulously pairs Justin Davis' loping bassline, which pulls the track along, with Anzaldo's icy, minimal guitar work. It brings to mind some alternate version of Joy Division that hasn't quite lost all hope. It gets close to exploding, but instead plays the shadows, never quite rising above a nervous simmer. The sound is abetted by producer John Reis, who honed his sound in seminal bands like Rocket from the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, and Hot Snakes. Much of the gravelly aggression he experimented with in those bands is present on The L-Shaped Man.