Deconstruct the symptom self Sabotage, transfer the pain
Cling to the discomfort Repress the drive, the risk, and the gain
Unacceptable desires Attention transfer
Cis-sis-sys system’s defense Within, without
Portland’s Ceremony Shadows conjures -nay, summons – something subterranean. What began as Timo’s solitary sound experiment has unfurled into a trio, with vocalists Anastasia and Jakub lending voice and voltage, folding layers of longing and liturgy into the brew. The roots of their collaboration stretch from America’s northwest to Germany’s grey skies and Poland’s industrial pulse, a collision of continents distilled into darkwave ritual.
Their debut album, Ascension, out today, feels less like a release and more like a rite. Here, shadow grapples with gleam, electronics pulse beneath incantatory vocals, and each track spirals toward something transcendent yet unsettling. Ceremony Shadows stitch mantra to melody, pairing trance-inducing rhythms with brooding, deliberate drones. Their influences are whispered: trace elements of The Knife’s glacial minimalism, Coil’s ceremonial churn, Dead Can Dance’s global bend – but they build their own altar.
Ascension exhumes, exhales, exhorts: a hymn for hidden selves and unseen worlds, a soundtrack for slipping between dimensions. Ceremony Shadows illuminate the dark, one ritual at a time. With this album, Ceremony Shadows delve into the dark depths of the unconscious, unraveling the mysteries that shape us, challenging audiences to confront complacency, question idols, and embrace their sovereignty. Sound becomes a tool for awakening, and performance becomes a shared rite of passage, urging us to reclaim our agency in a fractured world.
Light Like Stars, a spoken word piece against a wall of synth and percussion, strikes like a spark in the void; a declaration, a dare. It beckons you to abandon the brittle comfort of the familiar and hurl yourself headfirst into the abyss of possibility. Less a lullaby, more a litany, it’s a hymn to hedonism of the self: to choosing will over worry, freedom over fear.
Resistance buzzes with taut tension, its captivating dark disco rhythm conveys a powerful message: the greatest barriers are often those we create ourselves. Obstacles aren’t enemies; they are fuel for growth. Resistance isn’t a wall, but a whetstone, sharpening our resolve until hesitation breaks. Self-sabotage, stagnation, and second-guessing fade away under the heat of recognition. What confines you ultimately strengthens you.
Then comes Impetus, an ominous churning of dark palpitations that calls listeners to arms, refusing to let them sit idly by. The song conjures an atmosphere of fear only to transform it into forward momentum, erasing all hesitation. Through its brooding beats, the trio stretches both sinew and soul, pushing beyond comfort zones toward growth. Charged with raw resolve, the track demands action from listener and creator alike: stop shrinking, start moving. No more waiting, no retreat—every step compounds, every moment matters. It’s as if the song insists that you, too, are combustible—let the world witness your ignition.
Reclaim roars like a rallying cry: an invocation of independence, a stripped-bare sermon on self-sovereignty. It grabs the listener by the collar, tossing aside tired tropes and urging reclamation of body, will, and worth. Here, empowerment isn’t ornamental – it’s essential, elemental, electric.
Altars kneels at the crossroads where desire, divinity, and destruction meet. It’s a hymn and a hazard, inviting worship not only of the sacred self but of the dangerous duality within. Love, in its highest form, becomes both halo and hazard. The track tiptoes between ecstasy and erosion, reminding us that unity of the collective has always been hiding beneath the skin, waiting for recognition.
Then comes the baroque and brooding Idolatry, its dark beats as sharp as a shard of broken stained glass. It spits on pedestals and challenges the compulsion to elevate. Saints and sinners, gods and monsters; this track blurs the boundaries, beckoning us to embrace contradiction rather than cling to illusion. Devotion, here, is dismantled and redefined. Holistic, human, and wholly untamed, it urges embodiment of all opposites—the light and the lurid alike. It doesn’t preach; it provokes. Who do you worship? And why? Better yet: what happens when the idol you bow to is yourself?
Prey prowls with sci-fi beats beneath polite complacency, dissecting the docile drift of collective victimhood. It needles at numbness, dragging the listener from the dull ache of conformity toward confrontation, questioning the cycles of submission we clutch like comfort. Endure. Obey. Repeat. Is this the pinnacle of human potential?
Finally, we reach the eerie ritualistic atmosphere that echoes through the mysterious Ascension: less invitation, more initiation. It barrels headfirst into the liminal, where fear dissolves, and self-sovereignty sharpens. Darkness isn’t demonized, it’s devoured. Here begins the breaking; here begins the transformation.
Listen to Ascension below and order the album here.
Follow Ceremony Shadows:
Or via: