Ceremony's website offers visitors this adorably Luddite message: "We do not have a Twitter, MySpace or Facebook." Indeed, interpersonal connection does not seem to come easy for this Bay Area hardcore punk band: "It's getting hard... to stay human," frontman Ross Farrar hollers on the group's first LP for Matador Records. Previous Ceremony discs were dervish blurs of nail-gun thrash. On 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. Farrar's vein-popping rants stick with you because they're so refreshingly pure-hearted: "I caught the world flu/I saw the world blue," he self-diagnoses. It's hard to resist the urge to barf along.

Listen to "Hysteria":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“My President”

Young Jeezy teams up with Nas on this track, in which he compare his own success with the idea of an African-American winning the Democratic Party's nomination in the 2008 presidential election. "When I pulled up in my car, that s--- was unbelievable to people in my neighborhood because they were like, 'We grew up with him. How the hell did he accomplish this?'" he told Rolling Stone. "I feel like it was the same way with Obama. I grew up all this time, but I've never seen a black man this close to running this country."