Hypocrisy – End Of Disclosure Review

We are all doomed to repeat ourselves right? Yeah, sure… but that’s hardly a fitting intro for a review of a new Hypocrisy album, as they’ve most assuredly repeated themselves over their long career. There was their early 90s evolution, the big glaring mistake that was Catch 22, and a slight injection of blackened sounds on Virus, but for the most part they’ve essentially been making the same type of music for more than 15 years. So yes, they have absolutely repeated themselves.

And for that we have all been incredibly fortunate.

Hypocrisy can be counted among the small group of bands that has maintained musical quality, popularity, and integrity (again, minus Catch 22) over a career spanning more than two decades. They are probably be the only band to do that within a general genre classification that might be called “melodic death metal.” To that general framework they have added plenty of doom/death, smidgens of blast-laden, regular ol’ death metal, and a deep texture augmented by flourishes of keyboards. This sound has long been enhanced (and partially created) by the unmatched production techniques of frontman Peter Tägtgren, who crafts such a flawless and signature sound for his band as to make them unmistakable.

End of Disclosure, the twelfth album in the storied career of the band, finds Hypocrisy doing all of this, but not necessarily more. In fact, to the seasoned ear, it is pretty easy to pick out both vague homage and direct reference to the past. Some passages – like a simple arpeggio lead or hugely chuggy rhythm part – are less specific, but others might raise an eyebrow or two. Be it the slight parallels of “Fractured Millennium” during the album-opening title track, the Virus feel to “The Eye” (that dissonant hook), or the way the lumbering doom/death of “Hell Is Where I Stay” might have felt at home on The Fourth Dimension, just about every moment of End of Disclosure seems to call to mind some past moment in Hypocrisy’s career. The mega catchy “44 Double Zero” even seems like a direct sequel to “Fusion Programmed Minds” from the band’s eponymous classic, beginning with a similar fade-in before kicking into a very familiar-sounding intro riff.

But despite reaches to the past, every note is quality, and there remain enough highlights and special moments to push End of Disclosure slightly above other good-but-not-classic Hypocrisy albums such as Into the Abyss and The Arrival. The aforementioned title track is one of the best examples of the band’s melodic doom/death style in ages; “United We Fall” comes across like a stylistic cross section of The Final Chapter and packs one seriously great chorus (it isn’t the only tune to do so); and “Tales of Thy Spineless” will get the necks jerking with its trill-driven bridge. The album ends at its strongest, with the utterly desperate “The Return,” a chilling dirge that would stand up next to many of the band’s best slowed-down material. That haunting closer might be the only song here that quite reaches the level of such new era classics as “Let the Knife Do the Talking” or “Solar Empire,” but several others are damn fine in their own right, and nothing deserves to be shrugged off.

As such, End of Disclosure is an almost a perfect example of an album by a veteran band that most fans will love, but is basically unnecessary for anyone else. Unnecessary, but not at all unpleasant. It’s just that there are easily six albums in the band’s catalog that would get a recommendation over this newest one, not the least of which are the two beasts that preceded it. Still, it’s hard to find fault in continued excellence, and that is exactly what Hypocrisy represents at this point. No reason to not once again get lost in this wonderful combination of brutality, melody, and atmospheric majesty. Just know that, much like the band, you’ll likely be repeating yourself.

Posted by Zach Duvall

Last Rites Co-Owner; Senior Editor; Obnoxious overuser of baseball metaphors.

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