HISTORY
Inspired by famous death-metal bands as
Morbid Angel and other well-known bands from the Florida death-metal scene. Front man
Peter Tagtgren was very inspired by these bands and he created the death-metal band
Hypocrisy. A band that was focused on anti-religious themes like hell and darkness at the beginning, but then they later changed their lyric messages towards supernatural and society directed themes.
Hypocrisy has been described as a atmospheric melodic death-metal band, the band started out as a group of five but they were slowly melting down to three members. They became a trio; they churned out a lot of albums together during a long period of time before they finally became a quartet. When the band released their album
The Final Chapter they claimed that this was their last album, but the fans thought otherwise and the band continued their march into the realms of death-metal. This album you are about to read about is called
Virus, probably one of their best albums alongside
Hypocrisy and
The Final Chapter.
LYRIC MESSAGES
The band focused their lyrics at anti-religious themes when they first started, they sang about stuff like darkness, hatred against god and Jesus, hell and its belongings etc. But after their album called
The Fourth Dimension they started to focusing on alien themes, such as abductions and secret experiments, they did though kept some of their violent and/or obscure lyrics mixed among the new style of lyrics too. The albums kept their violent and supernatural themes but the band started to include new themes which were about the human nature and the modern society, like hatred, anger, disbelieve against other people and that people can’t do what they want because of the controlling systems. Inner struggles and personal problems was also some of the new lyrics.
THE BAND MEMBERS
Peter Tagtgren – The front man of this band, known world-wide as a producer with his own recording studio called
The Abyss. This man has also been working with other bands and self-invented side-projects as
Lock Up,
Pain and
The Abyss, just to mention a few. Back to subject,
Peter is the vocalist and guitarist in this band, his vocals has a great variety.
Peter delivers very raspy shrieking, deep demonic growls and calm and depressive vocals in this album. He also handle one of the guitars, and he does a great job alongside
Anders Holma. The rhythm sections are rock solid, the lead work is excellent, the riffage has a great variety and the guitar solos are pure energy packs.
Andreas Holma – Second guitarist in this band, I would describe him as equally as good as
Peter. He manages to keep up with the rest of the other crew members, both rhythms and leads are played with great skill, no signs of sloppiness here.
Mikael Hedlund – The second original band member (alongside
Peter) since the band first saw the light.
Mikael is the bassist, unfortunately there are not many moments where you can hear the bass lines. He does though helps to create a thick and steady rhythm section, the bass frequency is not so clear or audible but the overall sound is very thick and powerful.
Reidar Horghagen( Horgh) – Drummer of this band, I think personally that this guy was a bit better than former drummer
Lars Szoke. The drum patterns have a good amount of variety; there are maniac fast beats, moderated patterns and slower ballad paced patterns. All of them are catchy more or less, most patterns is very heavy and forceful. Definitely no signs of laziness,
Horgh does a great job on this album.
THE SONGS
Some bands uses sometimes a very straight-ahead formula in their material, the songs has the same structure but with some smaller changes like lyrics and riffage between every song, for example. Some bands make it sound great while other don’t.
Hypocrisy is a band that has a lot of variety among their songs, this album has a very good variety. We have murderous and addictive songs like
Scrutinized,
Compulsive Psychosis and
Fearless. We also have brutal, devastating classic death-songs like
Carving For Another Killing,
Blooddrenched and
Warpath. But there are not only these fast and brutal songs, we also have these slower, more eerie and calmer songs like
Let The Knife Do The Talking,
A Thousand Lies,
Incised Before I’ve Ceased. And then we have the final ending ballad called
Living To Die. As you can see, there are lots of songs that might grab your attention, you can find some classic structured songs, and some songs might have guitar work that you haven’t heard before. The variety is very big in the songs in this album.
MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
I’m a big fan of this band and the reasons are many but let’s focus on the things I thought was good about album now. One thing that I really liked was the vocals from
Peter, some bands might crank on with the same vocals without using any kinds of experimental usage.
Peter has a great vocal range, he doesn’t use one single vocal style, he uses every vocal style that he is capable of and makes the best of it. This made the album more enjoying and more interesting. A second thing I liked was the big variety among the songs; I would say that there are at least four types of songs here, none of the songs sound the same which is a very great thing. You got brutality, aggression, hatred, depression and reality in this album, if you don’t know how to release your anger just put this album into your stereo and turn up the volume and rock! I only found one thing that I thought was a bit bad and it was the guitars, there was nothing wrong with the overall guitar work but they felt t overwhelming. I thought that the guitars was bit too much, the bass was not given so much space, which was a sad thing in my opinion.
MY CONCLUSION
Classic
Hypocrisy material in my ears! I thought that this album was awesome, the whole album contained the great formula that
Hypocrisy uses. That would say a huge variety among the songs, both melodic and classic death-metal structured songs and an atmospheric ballad in the end. I will definitely recommend this album to
Hypocrisy fans, this album won’t let you down. I also think that other death-metal people should check this out, most because of the huge variety in the song material and because of the vocal work. This might not be a good album to start with if you want to get into
Hypocrisy but if you want to look for a real
Hypocrisy experience you should check their self-titled album and
The Final Capter album. This is one of Sweden’s greatest death-metal bands alongside other bands like
In Flames,
Soilwork and
Entombed.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- Scrutinized
-- Fearless
-- Compulsive Psychosis
-- Living To Die
This album will get a 5/5 because of its aggressive material, melodic tunes and for the great musicianship
