Review Summary: An excellent compilation from the all mighty death-metal band Hypocrisy, a record that shows what Hypocrisy is all about. A great record for people who want to get a great view of Hypocrisy's work.
Hypocrisy
10 Years Of Confusion And Chaos (compilation)
Band Information
Hypocrisy, good old
Hypocrisy, is one of the biggest death-metal bands in Sweden but they are still rarely mentioned among people and media.
Peter Tägtgren is the founder to this band and he is also a world wide known producer, the band was playing old school death-metal in the same spirit as
Morbid Angel and
Obituary at the beginning, as time went by more people left the band until there was three members left.
Peter Tägtgren were followed by two companions,
Mikeal Hedlund and
Lars Szöke, they became a trio and they changed their music quite drastically, from Florida death-metal to atmospheric melodic death-metal, they also took their lyrics to another level, death and anti-religious themes were replaced with themes directed towards the paranormal directions. Aliens, end-of-the-humankind and abductions became present themes in albums like
The Arrival and
Abducted. They did not completely changed their lyrics though, death, violence and apocalyptic themes still clings throughout their material,
Penetralia,
The Fourth Dimension and
Osculum Obscenum are probably three of their darkest albums with directions towards darkness and satan,
Into The Abyss is also an album with satanic ingredients but it had a more violent, rawer and faster approach than the other first three albums.
Hypocrisy and
The Final Chapter were two albums that had almost or
did have everything, great dynamics and excellent variety among the songs, the lyrics was also mixed as well, old material was mix with new material and the creation became a perfect blend of music which is totally unique for
Hypocrisy. There are actually no weaks album but if I would chose one it has to be
Catch 22, I really like it but if you compare it to the other albums you will notice that it sounds more like a ‘’succeeded’’ death-metal/NU-metal fusion.
Catch 22 and
Virus has lyrics which were concentrated on the human being, feelings and the failing system of the modern society, and of course there are some obscurer themes like murder, hate and mutilation included as well.
The Final Chapter was meant to be their last album, but (luckily) the love from the dedicated fans was basically more fuel to the already raging fire and
Hypocrisy continues to roar in the halls of death-metal.
The Music / Band Members
Peter Tägtgren has been the leading member from the day when the band first saw the light, as a vocalist he is awesome, he can deliver anything from the deepest growls to the loudest screams, mention any type of vocals and
Tägtgren will sing like that, calm, clean, raspy, shreiky you name it. Chanting is something that you rarely encounter in these types of bands, if you are looking for haunting chanting then you have found the right band,
Hypocrisy uses chanting a little now and then, unfortunately not all the time but that is a good thing though,
The Fourth Dimension,
The Arrival,
Hypocrisy and
The Final Chapter would be a few albums where you can find some songs with chanting moments.
Tägtgren is also a master when it comes to handle the instruments, here he is responsible for the guitars and keyboards, you can find a lots of standard death-metal riffing in most of the records, even black-metal elements emerges from time to time, believe it or not but some times you can hear that
Peter manages to blend in some small splashes of thrash-metal influences in the guitar work. You will find a huge variety of riffs in the world of
Hypocrisy, catchy, melodic, chaotic, atmospheric, technical, fast and slow riffs are some of the riffs that you will encounter while listening to this music. Keyboards are not audible in every song, the keyboards often shows up during the slower and darkest songs, the keyboards are often used to create the overwhelming atmosphere during the song.
Mikael Hedlund is the second original member after
Tägtgren,
Mikael handles the bass but this has never been one of the band’s biggest perk, the bass if often over shadowed by the soaring guitars, you can still be able to identify some clear and loud bass lines in the three first albums but after that you might have some difficulties to hear the bass, another thing is that
Mikael never shows off with his bass because there are hardly any standout performances from him.
Lars Szöke was at the time the third long-time companion of the three man crew, he took care of the drums and he did a great job, he had a great variety in his drum work, in the beginning he was playing ‘’classic’’ death-metal drumming which is very fast and perhaps a bit repetitive. When the band change their music directions the drums became somewhat simplistic and was not as fast as before, but because of the huge variety in the albums you can hear that the drum parts are very diverse, you got slow drums, medium paced drums, fast drumming and sometimes hyper fast, heavy or light, catchy and un-catchy, you will hear that there is a difference.
The Front Man
Peter Tägtgren is a very famous man in the world of metal, but as I said before, you almost never hear what he is doing or what he have done but I will give some more information about this unique man.
Peter does not only work with
Hypocrisy, he has also made his own black-metal band called
The Abyss, it was basically the same original trio but they had just changed instruments, this project is currently inactive but they released two albums,
Summon The Beast and
The Other Side.
Pain is his one-man project were he is playing a strange mix of industrial metal, this type of metal could also be called as techno metal, this is his second most successful work after
Hypocrisy.
Tägtgren has also been singing in the Swedish super group called
Bloodbath, a band that has the best of the best of Sweden’s various metal bands, but
Tägtgren is a man with many irons in his fire so he couldn’t continue singing in
Bloodbath, you can also find his name in the resume of the grind/death band called
Lock Up from the U.K too. He might be a quite gifted musician when it comes to collaboration with other bands but he also has his own studio,
The Abyss Studio. I saw a short reportage on television which was about metal, then suddenly you saw the show hosts in a studio and
Peter Tägtgren shows up, later there was an interview regarding his job as a producer:
(Interview)*
Host:
You got both Hypocrisy and Pain in your resume, how big are you?
Tägtgren:
Well… 1.75 meters high (small laughter)
Host:
But you have produced so many other bands, how many records have you produced?
Tägtgren:
Oh, I don’t know, 130-140 records maybe.
Hosts:
Jesus… How do you manage with this?
Tägtgren:
I don’t see it as a job, it is a hobby, its fun.
Album Information
10 Years Of Confusion And Chaos is the name of this compilation which was released by Nuclear Blast in 2001, a compilation that sums up the whole work of
Hypocrisy. The compilation does not have chronological order to the tracks, it starts though with a track from the first album and ends with a track from the last but between those tracks there is some chaos, nothing much to complain about but it would’ve been a bit more interesting if you had could’ve seen the development of the band’s music, anyway, this album delivers a mixed variation of songs that shows the listener what
Hypocrisy is capable of doing. I would say that this compilation has three types of songs, ballads, medium paced songs and very fast songs.
Osculum Obscenum,
Killing Art and
Left To Rot would be some of the songs that I think are fast ones,
Roswell -47,
A Fire In The Sky and
Fractured Millennium are in my opinion some of the medium paced songs and the ballads would be without a doubt
Deathrow (No Regrets),
The Final Chapter,
Until The End and
Apocalypse. I must say that this compilation does not show their musical abilities at 100%, I think that there are other songs that have much better structures and perhaps better musicianship than these songs that are included in this album. I didn’t notice this before but I soon heard that some songs didn’t sound like the original songs, there was six or seven tracks which were re-recorded, some of them sounded really good while others lost their uniqueness.
Hypocrisy’s music has developed from old-school death to atmospheric melodic death-metal which can seem like a huge step for others and vice versa, I admit that this band perhaps don’t expand or improve their instrumental abilities but who said that a band has to play highly technological music just to sound good, all the people who are and were members of this band are all great musicians but it is the feel of the music that counts in this case.
Hypocrisy has the ability to jump back and forth between different ‘’feels’’ in an album, some songs shows no mercy with their extremely aggressive sound and then you suddenly have a song which is totally depressive and or sad, once you thought that this was all you suddenly find a cruel and murderous slow paced song, you will experience this kind of mix when you listen to this album.
My Conclusion
I guess that should be the trick, this is my opinion about this compilation, if you listen to these songs and you will know why I love this band so much. I have heard people saying that the first death-metal band (or whatever) is the best death-metal band, everything started when one of my friends asked me once if I had heard ‘’black rock’’ or ‘’dark rock’’ as he called it and I said no, then we headed off to the record store and he found
Hypocrisy’s newest album at the time called
Catch 22. I was quite prejudice and somewhat intimidated when I first heard that kind of music but there was this kind of energy that was continuously tempting me to listen for some more, I knew that my parents would through me out of the house if I played the music loud so I borrowed the album and listened to it in secret, my friend eventually got an older album
The Fourth Dimension so I borrowed that too but it was not as pleasing as
Catch 22. There was a time when I didn’t care about the band until I started to hunt down all the albums and now I have some love for every album more or less. Back to the tracks, if you happen to like any kind of melodic death or regular death-metal then you must check out this band, if you don’t like their earlier work then you can try their latest and vice versa. I just want to say this, this is a band that can outclass other great melodic bands like
In Flames and other similar bands, they are perhaps more officially recognized but
Hypocrisy is your number one death-metal band when it comes to atmospheric and melodic death-metal. I hope that this review has been a good guidance and critics are most welcome, I thank you for taking your to read this review.
* = The interview was taken and was translated from a Swedish heavy-metal documentary show called
Rundgång.
Pros
+ The songs displays exactly what Hypocrisy are capable of doing
+ This compilation deliver a great variety of songs
+ A very good place to start at if you want to get into the band
+ The re-recorded songs has a very refreshed sound
Cons
- I can only see eight or nine of fourteen songs as real classics
- This compilation should have at least five more tracks
Recommended Tracks
These are my personal favourites but I have chosen these songs because I think that they will give the listener a perspective enough big to show what Hypocrisy has done and are able to accomplish, there are two fast songs and two slower songs.
-- Killing Art
-- The Final Chapter
-- Roswell -47
-- Apocalypse
I wanted to like this album more than I do but I thought it had some smaller flaws so I will give it a solid 4/5
