When I hear a song from this album or even the whole album I just have to review it, I have been listening to this album more and more and I every time I think it’s great.
Hypocrisy must be one of Sweden’s most undiscovered death-metal bands, you hear everywhere how people praises bands like
In Flames,
Arh Enemy or
Entombed but never
Hypocrisy. Front man
Peter Tägtgren has made an incredible work with this band, the band was a five man crew at the beginning but it has watered down to three members who continued their journey (they are though four members now). From being a anti-religious and satanic band
Hypocrisy changed their style to a more atmospheric and melodic death-metal style, they did also changed their lyrics pretty much also. Their lyrical themes were now focusing on supernatural stuff, aliens, abductions and more unusual things; they still had their violent and evil themes but they were not as common as in the beginning. This was the last album that contained the famous trio, who had churned out many quality albums but this was the final chapter for their drummer who left because of the tight touring dates.
This album is called
The Arrival, an album that has lots of the alien themes, the lyrics in this album are often directed towards human extinction, ‘’a new race’’, really apocalyptic and doomsday based lyrics. But there are a not only alien themes who dominate the lyrics in this album; there are of course other lyrics as well, most of them as wicked and twisted but who cares right? This album is definitely one of the bands greatest albums, this album has songs that
will stick onto your brain once you have heard them. The album does not deliver a fully loaded death-attack; most songs are pretty simple in their song patterns. There are very calm but yet heavy drum work, the riffing and shredding might not be top-notch, the bass is hidden but still well-heard behind the rhythm guitars. The only thing that might really blow the listener away would be the incredibly raspy vocals. But, the songs are very heavy, catchy and they have no similarities with each other.
As I said before, this was the last album with the long-lived trio, the small crew is still
Peter Tägtgren on the guitars and vocals,
Mikael Hedlund on the bass and the now gone drummer
Lars Szöke. This album is not a load of incredible musicianship but the band still proves that they can achieve great music with less complicated songs. The guitars is not very fast or highly complicated but the riffs are catchy and heavy, they also have the classic
Hypocrisy sound, the guitars feels so mighty and powerful during the extended chords. The guitar solos does though show some quality, here you have melodic solo parts and advanced and catchy moments. Unfortunately you can’t hear the bass very good; the band has never had a great bass sound in my opinion except for their earlier albums. The bass does though make a very thick and sturdy sound alongside the mighty rhythm guitars. The drumming is very mellow if you compare this to previous album, but this works just fine though, the drum patterns might be calmer and more heavy-metal directed but this makes the songs more enjoyable and easier to ‘’get into’’. And at last the vocals, the so awesome vocals. These vocals are the raspiest vocals I have heard yet, I have though experienced raspy vocals before but never this raspy.
Tägtgren delivers awesome vocal work on this album, you have both deep growls, raspy and sharp vocals and some classic occult chanting.
Since this album has many songs that I like and even love I have decided to begin with my favourite track and downwards the bad ones. We begin with
Eraser, the song starts with a slightly creepy but calm bass intro, the guitars later enters with the same riffs. The song is in a medium pace, it is incredibly catchy and it is heavy as h***, this song has the superb raspy vocals I told you about. This is the strongest and best track of this album, you don’t have to listen to any other
Hypocrisy song do get into them, you will be hooked by this song.
Slave To The Parasites is my second favourite, this song has a similar song pattern but it has more melody and variety. This one is also very heavy and catchy, and it also has these devilish and ultra raspy vocals, I would say that this song is nearly equally as good as
Eraser. We move on to
The Abyss, the song has a pretty boring intro. The intro is very slow and it does feel uninteresting but just wait until the song gets to business, deep growling and slow heavy riffing begins. It is the chorus that makes this song special because here are the famous
Hypocrisy chanting, they make this apocalyptic and occult feel to the song. The only thing I don’t like here is the intro and the second guitar solo. Which song will be next? Tough one but it will be
Born Dead, Buried Alive. This song starts off with a slow intro with creepy and wicked riffing, the song eventually transforms to a real death-metal forged song. Vocals enter along with intensive drumming, later on the devastating guitars comes along, and this song is very heavy and quite fast but not so highly addictive.
New World is my last favourite track here, the song starts with a horrible intro which sounds very hacky and bumpy. The song gets a newer pattern and it has this groovy but still brutal flow, the song is very death-metal structured but with these groovy moments makes this to a very interesting song. Catchiness, heaviness and uniqueness would describe this song.
Here comes the rest of the songs that didn’t shocked me as much as the others, these are very good songs though.
Stillborn is though one h*** of a song, it starts with a very flat sound intro based on the main riffs. This song is a bit fast and heavy of course, we have a good vocal work here but the song is not so catchy all the way though.
Dead Sky Dawning is perhaps one of the more mellow songs. It has a pretty simplistic song pattern, it is though catchy and has a good flow but you might listen to this song once or twice before you get tired.
The Depature sounds like the ballad of this album, it has this depressive and hopeless feel. The vocals here does not work well in my opinion, it feels like
Tägtgren tries to deliver more than what he is capable of. Not a bad song at all, the only thing that is bad here is the vocals.
War Within was the very first song I heard from this album, it was a very interesting song, The intro starts with a atmospheric feel alongside fast drumming and back ground chanting. It later gets a mellower and brutal pace, raspy vocals pierces it way through the song with some sharp screams here and there. This is one of the most brutal songs, it has some catchiness but the chorus drags the song down a bit.
I hope this didn’t have too much ‘’fanboy-spirit’’ over it, but this is the way I feel about this album and band. This album had songs that has really left deep scars in my brain that will never go away, songs like
Eraser,
Slave To The Parasites and
The Abyss is some of the greatest songs I have heard yet from this band (among countless others). I think that this album must belong to
Hypocrisy fans, and if you like death-metal in general you should check this album out. This album has memorable songs that you will remember once you have heard them, the album itself is not a 100% success but it is pretty close to be one. This review may not be a 100% success but I hoped that you enjoyed it and I hope this has been a good guidance.
My own recommendations would be
Eraser,
Slave To The Parasites,
The Abyss and
Born Dead, Buried Alive. This is a good album to check out if you want to know more about
Hypocrisy but that is just my own opinion. This album will be given a
4.5/5.
