CEREMONY began this year by committing both their live show and one of their most pivotal watershed moments within their creative evolution as a punk band by releasing Live at the Hollywood Palladium. On the listen, the Cali band performed the progressive hardcore classic Rohnert Park in full and then some. Even in revisiting their past selves, it was obvious in listening to the set — even if you weren’t there to witness it — how the present has had this strange way of reshaping the sound which came before even if they keep their feral early energy in the pit in tact.

They’ve been everything from a hardcore band doubling down in violence, one that’s helped kicked down doors for other boundary-shifting punk bands into wider indie rock spaces, as well as cleaned up as scene statesmen donning new wave ad post-punk-informed threads in their sound. Tell Me Your Dream, CEREMONY’s seventh studio album, is the album where all of these sonic identities which the band has been successfully exploring meet in the same location. It’s also the album that confirms their existence as one of the most vital forces in punk and hardcore, especially when we need these bands to shout out Palestine in song rather than side-stepping actual beliefs in favor of caring only about the aesthetics of it all and selling limited runs of shirts and hats for $50 a pop.

That happens as early into the listen as “Madness”, a funky groove-laden track that kisses guitarist Anthony Anzaldo’s Prince worship while expounding on their own synth-punk fusion in true-to-its name energ, punctuated by poet-in-house Ross Farrar’s astute observations on the modern day parallels between the wealthy class and the youth of today (“Being young is like being rich / You have this thing that everyone wants, and you couldn’t care less.”) He’s been refining his words wonderfully in his own surreal solo work these last few years, but Tell Me Your Dream is him at the top of his songwriting game with these kind of profound morbidities for our dark timeline (“10 Planets” and its anti-capitalist bark or rebuking the glorification of war and murder on “Death Destruction Mayhem”) as well as some beautiful glass half-full takes from his POV as a father, husband, and friend to his loved ones alive and departed (the melodic goth-punk evaporation that is its closer “Paradise”.)

Consider this a return to Rohnert Park — or at least the Zoo — in the sense where the band revisits old stomping grounds after being away from them for some years, realizing they’re a bit different from what they recall but so are they, too. “Other Hells” and the aforementioned “Death Destruction Mayhem” are arguably two of the most serrated and fiery CEREMONY tracks in a minute, though wonky neon keys and ghoulish chant-along choruses aided by producer and resident post-hardcore swami John Reis as well as former Tørsö bassist and past Ceremony touring member Jasmine Watson merges the band’s past lives with their current creative identities. “It’s not a river if it stops moving,” sings Farrar on the album’s highlight, the divinely wistful, Cure-hued and indie rock-slanted “Dark Summer”. In every direction of progress — be it the political, personal, or creative — CEREMONY are a testament to that notion, and Tell Me Your Dream lives it out lucidly.

Highlights: “Madness”, “Dark Summer”, “Death Destruction Madness”

CEREMONY’s Tell Me Your Dream is available now on Relapse Records.

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