Review Summary: I am Craving for Another Virus and this is not exactly it.
Hypocrisy has been releasing albums for thirty years, and within that time, they have created a fairly consistent and enjoyable discography with some very high highs. Despite this, their last album did leave me wanting something a bit more different, as it felt like a rather underwhelming release. With an 8 year long gap between that album,
Worship should have had enough time to be something more, but it was still an improvement.
The album peaks with the self-titled track that opens up the album. It begins with a solid acoustic section that then transitions into some excellent riffage and lead guitar work with the energy staying constant till the end of the track. The guitar on this album is an obvious highlight. It rarely feels like the album is lacking in good riffs or solos. This is what generally keeps me interested in the songs. For example,
Chemical Whore and
Greedy Bastards feature some rather cringey lyrics, but the guitar work makes up for that in spades with some of the strongest riffs from the album being found here. These tracks also contain some decent choruses.
Worship also excels in some of it’s mid-tempo tracks, where they allow room for the guitar melody to take centre stage. The enveloping lead guitar melody in
We’re the Walking Dead’s chorus propels this cut into being an easy standout in the tracklist. This also applies to the memorable closer,
Gods of the Underground, which also accomplishes to form a catchy vocal line during it’s chorus. Another strength this album possesses is Peter Tägtgren’s versatile vocals. He can still go from his low growls to his high shrieks in seconds with ease.
They Will Arrive further showcases the bands well established skill at riff writing, but it also has some slight symphonic elements that add so much to the overall sound.
Worship does suffer from it sounding rather tired and uninspired, despite some good riffs and melodies that happen here and there, as it is quite obvious that Hypocrisy is running out of new ideas. Many songs on the record go in one ear and out the other. Even after listening to the album six times for this review, I still struggle to remember anything that happened in songs like
Dead World or
Another Day. As I mentioned before, tracks here are also weakened by the occasional bad lyric. Not all the mid-tempo songs are successful either with
Bug In the Net sounding rather boring and drab as the runtime slowly plods along.
Overall,
Worship fails at progressing the bands sound to something new or more inspired. However, it is definitely an improvement over their previous work,
End of Disclosure, as it does contain some notable highlights that do live up to Hypocrisy’s name. These highlights being the title track,
We’re the Walking Dead and
Gods of the Underground. The riffs and vocals are still solid, even if they do sound like they lack impact in a few of the songs. It is still a decent melodic death metal album, but there is much better out there and some of these records are found earlier in Hypocrisy’s discography.
