Ceremony Return With “Other Hells,” First New Song in Four Years: Stream

Ceremony have released their first song in four years with the track “Other Hells.”

The new song follows the stand-alone single “Vanity Spawned by Fear,” released in 2022, while the California punk band’s most recent studio album is 2019’s In the Spirit World.

“Other Hells” sees the band return to the hardcore that defined their earliest years. The previous interiority and moodiness of their gothic material is replaced with a classic up-tempo punk rock that wouldn’t have been out of place in 1980. The synths of their gothy era aren’t abandoned, though, joining alongside the grenade shrapnel guitars and slimy punk vocals.

Singer Ross Farrar stated, “‘Other Hells’ started as a meditation on the dualistic arts and the interplay of opposing forces in our lives: awake/asleep, physical/spiritual, inhale/exhale.”

He continued, “This is a constant theme in the work of Ceremony; beauty juxtaposed with the intensity of aggressive music, seeking to create a single, cohesive work through audible, visual, and structural elements. Amid the ongoing rise in politics that lean on tribalism and polarizing rhetoric in an attempt to divide, the song responds by aiming to unify, using punk’s great liberatory force: the slam.”

The surprise release follows Ceremony’s performances the past two weekends at Coachella, which saw the band lean heavily on material from its early hardcore days.

Earlier this year, Ceremony released their first-ever concert album, Live at the Hollywood Palladium, capturing a 2024 performance at the famed venue.

Stream the new single “Other Hells,” as well as watch their performance of “Open Head” at this year’s Coachella below.