Entry 684 - Hypocrisy

Style: Melodic death metal

Primary Emotions/Themes: Aliens

Thoughts: Nostalgia sucks. It ruins things for me. I remembered this album so fondly, but never decided to listen to it again until recently... specifically until today when I put it on my record player. What a fuckin bitch nostalgia is. 

Hypocrisy's self titled album... has issues. Fractured Millennium is a fantastic opener. It starts off with a choir made completely from cheesy keyboards and gets the song really moving with a bass and drum beat that before the guitars come in and blow everything open. Peter's trademark scream overrides everything and we are off again to another fantastic Hypocrisy song. 

The follow up Apocalyptic Hybrid also kicks all sort of ass. It's one of the most aggressive songs that Hypocrisy has written in years. You'd almost have to go back to Osculum Obscenum before you get anything near this aggressive. The riffs rip and shred, the vocals match their ferocity note for note. The music is straight up death metal, little to no melody involved. It's awesome.

What a hell of a one two punch to start the album. I was pumped! This was just as good as I remembered it, maybe even better! Then Fusion Programmed Minds came in... and while it doesn't start bad, it doesn't start good either. It's just two riffs played back and fourth waiting for the song to really start and the intro goes on for almost a minute. When the song finally does start it's not bad, but it's nothing like the energy that those first two songs brought... I had to be let down at some point I guess, I just didn't expect it to be the third song.

Maybe it's not that bad. It does have some great melodies in it, and after the overlong intro it does get into it's own groove and finds it's identity. This may be something where the song is in the wrong place in the album rather than a poor song all together and it does work well for the next song.

I'm going to spare the track by track review here. Just know that track 4 rules and track 5 is where things start to fall off the rails for me. Reversed Reflections has an annoying main riff, Peter's vocals are not reflective of the quality that he can put out... even on the same album. The song just annoys the fuck out of me and gets skipped almost every single time I listen.

The same thing happens on Disconnected Magnetic Corridors. It tries to capture the same magic that Request Denied has on the pervious album but it just falls flat. The vocals work, but the riffs don't match up with the expected quality that I know Hypocrisy can bring. It sounds flat, not nearly as bad as Reversed Reflections but damn it's wasted potential.

The last two songs on the album feel like they should have been reversed in order as well. Self-inflicted Overload is a rocking track that is... generic? It sounds like a basic death'n'roll track, and when the chorus comes in the riff and vocals just make me want to stop the song completely. It's just straight up bad. 

Paled Empty Sphere on the other hand is the band succeeding at everything that they have failed at so frequently in the past few tracks. It's atmospheric, the clean vocals fit to perfection and the riffs straight up work. It should have been the album closer.

Hypocrisy's self titled album is a mixed bag to say the least. There are some damn good tracks on here, and there are also some of Hypocrisy's worst songs. I know what this band can do, they can kick all sorts of ass when they want to... I don't hear it here, at least not consistently. That said, when this album is good it is r e a l l y good, that in and of itself is worth something.

Written February 1st 2024