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- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Mar 7, 2012Everything continues to feel heavy.
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Alternative PressMar 7, 2012All that keeps Zoo from being a perfect record is the nagging feeling that Ceremony has even better work ahead. [Apr 2012, p.90]
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Mar 16, 2012At its best Zoo prowls menacingly and intensely, shrouded in sheets of steely guitar and fogs of squall and distortion... [But] this mood-heavy mix doesn't always work.
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Mar 7, 2012Zoo is a well-produced record that captures a band on its way up the ladder.
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Mar 12, 2012Zoo is a bleak record, but through prolonged exposure it can begin to feel like a place you want to stay.
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Mar 6, 2012In just two years, Ceremony has leaped aggressively forward in its evolution, and Zoo captures this over 12 tracks that reconfigure the group into something unique and vital.
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Mar 19, 2012Whatever the band loses in spastic energy and volatility on Zoo, it gains in melodic constancy.
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Mar 6, 2012It's punk rock by the numbers.
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Apr 4, 2012Gesturing, though, is just about all it does.
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Kerrang!Mar 20, 2012It packs a ferocious, formidable bite. [3 Mar 2012, p.54]
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Mar 22, 2012The song writing is passable, the sound is passable, but passable is usually as boring as it sounds.
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Mar 9, 2012Too much of it drifts into generic 1960s-nodding garage-rock territory.
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Mar 7, 2012For the majority of the record, Ceremony is quite comfortable being average. Neither laudable nor terrible, Ceremony's music sets an easy target, hits the mark, and then moves on to the next task.
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Mar 9, 2012While still mostly a success, Zoo marks the first time where Ceremony do not seem 100% sure of their own identity.
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Mar 6, 2012On Zoo, Ceremony obliterate more discriminately, recalling the post-punk of Joy Division, the Fall and Wire – if those bands had spent more time in weight rooms than art galleries.
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Mar 6, 2012The songs are catchy and nuanced, and the rage that defined them a mere seven years ago comes across here as measured, simmering frustration.
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Mar 6, 2012Hardcore bands rarely age gracefully, but Ceremony's found a way to accentuate its broadest influences without losing touch with its younger, rowdier days.
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Mar 13, 2012Zoo is a fine tribute to [often-compared band]Wire's heavier side, alternating between powerful, lumbering riffs and manic splatters of guitar noise.
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Mar 7, 2012[Zoo will piss you off if you think] their Fugaziish formative albums are sacrosanct and that any deviation voids them in the eyes of The Living Christ Our Lord Henry Rollins. Two, you hate loud noises.
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Mar 9, 2012Ceremony's misanthropy has never sounded more genuinely punk.
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UncutMar 13, 2012Less reactionary souls will thrill to the dynamic Zoo. [Apr 2012, p.73]