Hypocrisy – Catch 22
Album Information
This album was released in 2002 by the death-metal trio from Sweden; this album has influences from the now disbanded Pantera and it has a heavier sound and more rhythmic in the songs. This album has not much fragments from the death-metal scene and Lars did say in a interview that the band had cut out pretty much of the satanic and violent stuff that they have in their other albums. The lyrics is more based around politics and feelings towards people. This album is like a fan-splitting album, this album may be a dissapointment to the most dedicated fans to the band because of its heavyness. But this is a great album to those who never heard death-metal before, it is not as raw and intensive as their other material. I would categorize this album as heavy/death-metal.
Track Information
The songs on this album sure is different than the others, these songs are heavier and more ¨friendly¨ to the listeners. The vocals is Peter’s ordinary harsch screaming and the instrumental part is somewhat improved like his guitars. The guitar sounds more powerful and brutal than the screamy and scratchy tunes on the previous records (except The Fourth Dimension). Finally we can hear Hedlunds bass on this album, it doesn’t sounds clear because I found it a distorted but you can hear it. Lars’s drumming is not to advanced in this album, he plays yet simple drumparts which sounds perfect to the songs. Those who have heard Lars Ulrich’s drums in St.Anger get a bit reminding on these tracks but this sounds really great.
The songs is as I said before more rhythmic and well-structured, there are slow/grinding songs like Hatred and Destroyed. There is also songs with the well-known over-the-top drumming and those songs are for example A Public Puppet, Don’t Judge Me and Another Dead End (for another dead man). These songs are very similar to Pantera’s material, chunky riffing, intensive drumming and aggressive vocals.
The only most melodic track is Edge Of Madness, it starts with a melodic and sadly keyboard intro. This intro is played along the main riff and I didn’t know that it could sound that great. The lyrics are about the world and its problems like economics and other politic-realated stuff. Turn The Page is the albums most ferosious and fastest songs, it played with a pitched riff along with the well-sounding bass. Aggressive and frustrated vocals and it has the same tempo throughout the song.
Most albums Hypocrisy has at least one ending ballad or something like that. This ballad sounds flat and uniteresting, the lyrics is about his miserable life which is based on broken promises, lies and stuff like that. The song ¨Slippin Away¨ has worse lyrics about suicide but the intrumental part is more melodic and its calm tempo. This ballad has bad vocals and boring slow riffs and no real solo if I say so, there is no classic ¨Hypocrisy¨ chanting or acoustics.
Final Rating
This was my very first death-metal album which I borrowed from a friend, it took some time to get used to it but at the end the songs finally got stuck on my mind. I think this is one of the best albums yet Hypocrisy has made and this is also one of my favorite albums. I think every death-metal fan should get this CD or at least heard a few songs from it. Good variation of songs and they all are perfect and you don’t get tired of the album so quick. The only thing that lowers the rating is the boring ballad so the final rating will be: 4.5/5
Recommended Tracks
-Turn The Page
-Hatred
-A Public Puppet
-Egde Of Madness
Pros
-More base in the guitars
-Good bass (Finally)
-Good variation of the songs
-Listener friendly
Cons
-To few melodic moments
-To few songs
-The track ¨All Turns Black¨
