Ceremony - Zoo

I don't think I've seen any pictures or reviews of the new Ceremony album on any record collecting blogs yet. Seems odd seeing as I am never first these days. But hey, I'm happy to go first for once. Makes a nice change...

So, everybody probably knows by now that Ceremony jumped ship from Bridge Nine a while ago and moved to Matador Records. I'm not sure that Matador is a label that has bothered with limited edition records before, but interestingly they seem to have got down with the concept after signing Ceremony. I can only guess that the band had some influence in this. The latest album 'Zoo' was released on three limited edition colours of vinyl - Red for pre-order, green for independent record stores, and blue for tour. And the usual unlimited black vinyl for people who couldn't care less.

Well, as usual these days I missed the pre-order, so I hit up eBay and got a sealed copy which, after opening, turned out to be green.

It seems there is a bit of a competition going on recently with records I buy for which one can have the largest insert. This album comes close with a big fold out lyric sheet poster thing, although I don't think anything is ever going to beat the insert on the Fire & Ice 'Collections' LP.

After Ceremony's surprising change of direction with their last album, this one isn't really much of a surprise at all. It continues down the same path, heading further away from the short, angry blasts of their past. They now sound to me like a completely mediocre English punk band from the late 70s. I don't know... I've listened to this album ten times now and all I can say is that it's ok. Not mind blowing. Just ok. I do find myself getting a couple of songs stuck in my head, but it really is taking me a lot of effort to get this one. However, as I know from years of experience, the slow burners always turn out to be the best ones in the end. So no doubt this still has a lot of mileage in it yet.