Review: CEREMONY “Tyranny From Above”

CEREMONY “Tyranny From Above”
Vic records

Last time there are quite many bands are coming back from the neither word in Netherlands. The same thing happens to CEREMONY which reborn after 20 years. Originally it was founded in 1989 in Ridderkark. It’s not so big town which’s capital of community. Anyway, in whole municipality of Ridderkark (which includes several other towns, villages and townships) live a little more than 45.000 of people. It’s located in province of South Holland where the largest city is Rotterdam, by the way.

The band died in 1995, but guys decided to give to it new life in 2015. I’m sure that Minio (Herminio Dacruz – bass), Johan van de Sluijs (guitar), Peter Verhoef (guitar) and Micha Verboom (vocals), joined by Guido Klap (drums) are working on new stuff. But in meantime they decided to let know about their rebirth with re-release of their only full-length “Tyranny From Above”. Of course, as it happens mostly in such cases, we have here not only the songs which were originally putted on album, but also whole “Promo’94” and EP “Inclemency” from 1992 – so thirteen songs instead of eight.

Music is rather easy to describe by few words. That’s definitely Death Metal in old good style! But since this is very broad term which in fact says a little then you’ll be forced to read more, much more. Of course I know that there’re people for who words written above will be enough recommendation, but…

In general this is massive music which even if there wouldn’t be vocals at all could be connoted with mentioned above sub-genre of Metal. Riffs are classic ones – short, broken and brutal. Both Johan and Peter don’t play in some technical displays, but are just going forward. It doesn’t mean that we haven’t here some more technical or in this brutal meaning melodic riffs at all. We have it and even in quite high number. The fact is that listener must really listen to the music to notice it, but in general guys care more about brutality! So technique is a slave of brutality here! Some riffs remind me another Dutch band which’s first released ever was entitled “Perpetual Damnation”. The fact is that “Where Is Your God Now…?” was released a little earlier, but since it was a split… Originally on all releases which contains this re-released album drums played Patrick van Gelder and he did it very variously (just like guitars, by the way), uses cymbals almost whole the time. We maybe haven’t a lot of passages (especially some sophisticated ones) here, but even without that we can hear that he plays this instrument not since yesterday. Tempo is mostly middle what doesn’t disturb songs to be just brutal, uncompromising and fuck up all what fake Metal! There happens that the bass comes out from background on the first place and then we can hear it pulsate in very pleasant for our ears way – we can also hear the proof of Minio’s art on this field. Micha has quite deep growling and it makes music complete and homogenous in positive meaning of this word.

So, if you’re fan of Death Metal in the vein of mentioned above band than this album will buy you directly!!! Especially that CEREMONY isn’t any fuckin’ copy of their better known Metal brothers (there was some girl in the band some tome, but better not to mention about it when you speak with Aad… ehehehehehehe…) from Schiedam. They just understand how should sound Death Metal in the same way.