BACKGROUND INFORMATION
After their debut album
Penetralia that contained similarities from the death-metal band
Morbid Angel such as deep growling and classic death-metal elements the swedish death-metal
Hypocrisy released another album. That album had an even more extreme sound and atmosphere and is likely their most extreme album so far. This review is about to describe the album called
''Obsculum Obscenum'' from the well-known death-metal band
Hypocrisy. This album shows many signs of extreme elements such as deep growls, the guitars are puking out heavy and ''obscure'' riffage along with a cruel bass and fast pounding drums. The lyrics is typical death-metal because of the satanic themes about death, hatred against religions, god and stuff that belongs to the opposite side of heaven.
THE CREW
The line-up for this album was the vocalist
Masse Broberg,
Peter Tägtgren on the guitars,
Mikael Hedlund on the bass and
Lars Szöke behind the drums.
Masse's last album and both albums had these very deep growling vocals. Though this is not my taste of vocal work but it does make this album very cruel and evil,
Masse delivers most of the times deep growls but he also releases some very harsh shrieks in some songs too. This member is known worldwide both as a producer and musician and his name is
Peter Tägtgren and he is responible for the guitar work. The guitar is very heavy but it still sounds a little but shadowed by the bass but that just makes the sound more brutal. The riffage sounds though pretty simplistic, there is not so much variety in the guitar work but it is deadly close sometimes towards more black-metal directed music. The guitar solos are not true highlight solos though, most of the are short, quite chaotic and non-melodic most of the time.
Mikael's bass work in this album is very good I must say, he provides a very brutal, loud and steady rhythm section. He bass goes perfect along with the guitars and the sound becomes pretty obscure and raw, good performance. The drumming is done by
Lars Szöke who hung on to the band for a very long time until he choosed to jump of because of the tight spaces between the tours if I remember correct. Good drumming, very classic death-metal drumming but this drumming might get on your nerves if you are not familiar to them. The patterns is often very fast and intense and there are also some heavy pounding drumbeats here as well.
TRACK REVIEW
The album goes out with
Pleasure Of Molestation, a song with an easy-approaching intro with very ghostly sound effects. The band kicks in soon with a heavy intro with nearly fast drums, fast guitars and dual screams and growls, the song is though slightly catchy at some moments and the vocal work has a good variety.
Exclamation Of A Necrofag starts with a more rhythmic and catchier intro, the song is fast, has a catchy feel and the instruments are loud and clear. The vocals are both growls and raspy shrieks and there guitar solos are very good here. The album hammers on with the title-track
Osculum Obscenum, the song has a quiet intro with pulsing sound effects and a speaking voice in the background. The song goes of very slow and get heavier and it really is grinding, the song gets more speed with time and the vocals are shifting between growls and this time half-yell screaming. A very heavy song which is quite catchy, but the guitar solo is nothing to applaud to.
Necronomicon starts with medium paced intro most based around the guitars and drums, the song later bursts out in a death frenzy. The pace is very intensive to begin with but the speed fades away to leave room to a slower tempo, good vocal work with deep growls, high screams and raspy shrieking. The song has some catchy and fast riffing plus more crazy soloing, pretty good song.
Black Metal is a
Venom cover by the way (I think). The song begins with what sounds like a person is being tortured by some sort of mechanic thing, the song builds up during the intro and is later complete. The song is very intensive and the vocals sounds more strained which makes the song hard to endure. I don't think this song is catchy just because of the vocals and the song does not have so much variety.
The album contiues its rampage with
Inferior Devoties, a quite heavy song with a fast tempo. The intro is rather slow but the song turns up in pace and heavy drumwork is performed, the song appears to have three different guitar solos but I can't find none of them as interesting, it also has some chanting near the end but it is done by female vocalist and
Masse.
Infant Sacrifices starts wit catchy and rhythmic drum and guitar work, the song keeps its structure pretty good all the way mixed with slower sections with more ''melodic'' tunes. A quite catchy song with great drum work and with a heavy feel.
Attachment To The Ancestor goes out with a very slow intro, some whispering is heard and then
Masse begins to growl. The song is one of the slowest songs and very heavy and sluggish guitar work, the song does speed up a bit near the end and gets a bit more catchier.
Althotas is the closer to this album and it is also the longest song at eight minutes. The song starts with heavy drumbeats and drumrolls, the song gets very heavy and the sound feels quite ''marching''. This song is one of the catchiest in my opinion, the chuga-chuga guitars sounds great and the drums are good. The tempo speeds up after one minute, when the three minute mark is reached melodic sound effects rings out for a short moment and the song slowly fades away into silence.
FINAL JUDGEMENT
I'm not a big fan of the death-metal genre but I am a very big fan of
Hypocrisy, but I didn't enjoy this album so much because it was too extreme for me. I like though the vocal work of death-vocalists and this was kind of enjoying, the things I liked in this album was most of the time the bass performance, the vocals and the guitars. The whole album was very heavy, brutal and raw at the same time which I like, but the tempos and the drum work made the songs uninteresting thats the only way I can describe it. There was though some songs that I enjoyed but I would not listen to them many times, not even the whole album too. If you like bands like
Deicide,
Morbid Angel and
Death you should check this out. If you like death-metal in general you should also give this a chance. I thank you for reading this and I hope this made was to some help.
PROS
+ The sound is very heavy, brutal and raw
+ The bass made a cool obscure sound together with the guitars
+ The vocals had a good variety, three different styles of death-singing
CONS
- The guitar solos were not enjoying
- I know that death-metal is not about melody but the songs were not so catchy
- Most drum patterns felt a bit flat at some moments
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- Exclamation Of A Necrofag
-- Inferior Devoties
-- Attachment To The Ancestor
The overall album rating will a be:
3/5
. Their LATEST work is highly recommended.
