Ceremony are exhausted. The California quintet are sitting in Sandoony USA, a sparse, humid, and highly chlorinated Russian bathhouse in Brooklyn. Singer Ross Farrar, 30, sniffles and coughs while apologizing for a cold he's battling; drummer Jake Casarotti, 26, sits in sleepy silence. At the moment, the band's taking a substantial break from touring as they put the finishing touches on their fifth LP, The L-Shaped Man—and it's one that is well deserved, as the punk experimentalists performed four sets in just over 16 hours at this year's SXSW. When we first meet post-festival, they're still nursing what they call a "bangover."

"When you play a show and you haven't for a while..." starts bassist Justin Davis, 27, before Farrar interrupts, "My whole body is sore." Headbanging and violent pogoing can take its toll on punks of all ages—but after a full decade in action, Ceremony aren't as young as they were a decade ago, when the band was formed. At 33, guitarist Andy Nelson's the oldest member of Ceremony, as well as the only one who's familiar with bathhouse ethics, so he leads the rest of the band—clad in white bathrobes, ill-fitting bathing suits, and plastic slippers—through the facility. Still, he can only do so much: while in the steam room, guitarist Anthony Anzaldo, 28, is reprimanded by Sandoony staff for wearing a small pair of underwear instead of the required swim trunks.

Nelson eventually corrals the crew to a nearby hot tub, where they recount their recent SXSW trip—which marked the first time that they performed a fair amount of material from The L-Shaped Man. The crowd response to the new stuff was largely positive, if a little different than usual. "If we play a show in the middle of nowhere and no one's singing along or dancing, It's clear they're not into it," Anzaldo says, a straightedge "X" tattoo peeking above his robe. "But our new stuff doesn't lead to that type of crowd reaction."

Each of Ceremony's records has involved a reactionary departure from the sound of the one that preceded it, but none has been as big of a jump as The L-Shaped Man. Nearly five years after Farrar screamed that he was sick of Black Flag / sick of Cro-Mags on the opening track of 2010's Rohnert Park, he's traded in his adenoidal adolescent angst for a throaty baritone. The band around him has similarly scaled back, stripping down their careening rush to anxious single-note guitar lines and thunderous drum rolls. The record represents a radical head-snapping change of pace for Ceremony—one that underlines their Joy Division-referencing band name—but then, as Nelson is quick to affirm, Ceremony's sound has always been in a state of flux: "Exploration and growth are our constants."