Hypocrisy - The Arrival

*=Staff's pick	Born Dead, Buried Alive Eraser* Stillborn* Slave To The Parasites New World* The Abyss Dead Sky Dawning* The Departure War Within*

Genre	Melodic Death Metal	Peter Tägtgren	Vocals
Tracks	9	Peter Tägtgren	Guitar
Runningtime	40 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Nuclear Blast	Mikael Hedlund	Bass
Release	16 Feb. 2004	Lars Szöke	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	In Flames, Arch Enemy, At The Gates

Hypocrisy is probably somewhat familiar to most fans of death metal, whether you like them or not you are likely to know that Peter Tägtgren is a well renowned producer with his studio The Abyss were he has produced acts like: Thyrfing, Amon Amarth, Gardenian, Wolf and The Forsaken among many others. And if you have missed those things you have with all certainty heard of Pain, Peters electro-metal soloproject.

Strong and powerful death metal is what Hypocrisy is all about, they manages to mix traditional death with a more modern and more polished sound. And with the melodic death metal I also find a closeness to the Gothenburg sound that was successfully developed by bands like In Flames and Dark Tranquillity for instance. Eraser is one good example that comes close to In Flames while Stillborn is another good example that comes close to how Dark Tranquillity sounds on their Damage Done album.

Dead By Dawning quickly becomes my first choice on The Arrival, a fast track with a great drive and flow in the music with a strong and melodic almost catchy refrain, this track should work really if they chose to play it live. You can hint the connections to Pain with Dead By Dawning but with Slave To The Parasites it come out more apparent that it is the same man behind both projects. It is a heavy and melancholic mid-tempo song with a nice guitar-line that runs through the chorus and if you would exchange the growls with more clean vocals and throw in some electronic sounds it could be picked out of an Pain album.

A great song in the fast traditional death metal style is New World with dark grunts in the verses and with powerful riffing that supports the chorus, and with a break with grinding guitars before a furiously great guitar-solo.

Half of the album holds up really great with strong material and with those songs this album is very much worthwhile. But with songs like The Abyss or The Departure that are slow and dark songs with a doomish death metal the songmaterial isn't strong enough and therefor they are no more than simply ok tracks.

The line-up in Hypocrisy has at the beginning of this year changed, drummer Szöke left the band because he couldn't handle the hectic schedule of Hypocrisy and has been replaced by Horgh (a.k.a. Reidar Horghagen) (Immortal, Grimfist). Also new to the band is guitarist Andreas Holma that fills in the last spot that turns Hypocrisy from a trio to becoming a quartet.

See also review of: End Of Disclosure , Virus

Production	Vocals	Compositions
9	7	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Thomas