Hypocrisy
Into the Abyss

THE REVIEW

Luludia & Demarga...

They looked for each other, they courted each other for a few weeks; then the first phone contact happened and they decided to bet everything on the Swedish band Hypocrisy.

A work written by two, with four hands; one of the two thinking (?) heads ready to speak well of it, to praise the album. The other part to tear it all apart. Paradise and Hell; black and white in the same review.

An soul divided in two, imagine that, the psychedelic sugar on one side, the crash and bark on the other. A schizophrenic wandering through the sounds, the right ear and the left ear in perpetual acoustic battle...

….......

It’s up to me to set the tone for the page; and I am the proudest and most metallic part of the duo, of the two-headed creature that has formed, that has been shaped from the mud.

I say Hypocrisy and I must immediately write Peter Tagtgren, the father-master of the combo originally from Ludvika in central Sweden. Born in 1990 and now with “Into the Abyss” already at the seventh studio work.

We are in April 2000 and the trio locks themselves in the Abyss Studio, here lies the mystery of the dire title chosen for the work, owned by the same Peter. They emerge after a month with an incredible album in terms of destructive sounds. Compact, disturbed, with malicious, visceral phrases, from the underworld.

Ten tracks, half of which are played at unprecedented speed. A bizarre, neurasthenic, schizoid Death Metal; a diabolic concentrate, with Peter's voice often venturing into Black Metal territories, being so stretched and torn. Supporting him in this demonstration of true madness are the reliable Michael Hedlund on bass and Lars Szoke on drums.

But it is the leader's bloodied guitar that dominates everything; blasts of primal violence as happened in the opener "Legions Descend" and the subsequent "Blinded": a mad crossroads drawing from the Brutal Death of Cannibal Corpse, from the Death’n’Roll of Entombed. A frightening force, an indescribable chaos that is replicated and amplified in the short and furious "Sodomized"...nomen omen...

Minutes of pure terror, annihilating whiplashes; steamrollers that leave no survivors, that overwhelm and set everything on fire.

But the work is not composed only of force. There are also measured moments, where one enters Gothic-Doom territories of unsurpassed beauty.

And then it is right at this point to mention the mid tempo "Fire in the Sky" placed halfway through the work to break the rhythm, to give breath to the listener disintegrated by the first songs until that point.

But it is not over because the album concludes with the even more atmospheric and decadent "Deathrow (No Regrets)": wrenching and painful Gothic-Symphonic rhythms with the voice taking on elegiac, clean, clear tones in much of the text. With a final solo of the six strings of infinite and bare beauty".

Ad Maiora...

…...................................

Fetido de marga grinder. Mal te ne incolse.

How did you dare to desecrate this harmony lair with the sounds of hell? Who are these cavrones that confuse noise science with cavernous scream, rock’n’roll freshness with the most blatant sonic obtuseness?

And then tell me, what's this story about Sweden? From there come tennis players, light wooden furniture, pale maidens who always sacrifice themselves to the rugged womanizers of Romagna. Come on, let's go, Sweden!!!

And anyway, here’s the album, with the cat looking at me wide-eyed and taking refuge under the bed at those guitar riffs.

With the little house spirits, accustomed to my sounds (suspended carousels and jumping sounds), now writhing in horror and flying frightened within a malevolent wind.

Even though it's only a moment and in the end, the chaos becomes a kind of background noise. The cat returns, the little spirits calm down. In short, nothing happened.

But maybe I’m too harsh. Here and there the mess almost pleases me, the noise instinct sometimes works. But do not fear, foul other part of me, you will not have me, you will never have me!!! Also because the final ballad is like a fantasy/horror comic strip. A sad ritual for secretaries who trust a demon after the second Mojito.

Anyway dear Swedish cavrones, a piece of advice. Keep only the obsession from this your slime. Forget the caveman ABC, forget that chant which starts as an exorcist and becomes a small exorcist. And with a neutral voice, or maybe a sinister whisper, recite the inventory of the western horrors.

Trallallà...