Hypocrisy's latest The Arrival continues their trend of creating brutal yet melodic death metal, as they look to bounce back to their more aggressive style of old after the commercial sounds of their previous effort Catch 22. The results are excellent, as The Arrival contains many of the trademark Hypocrisy elements-the gutteral & screeching vocals of leader Peter Tagtgren, loads of melodic harmony guitar leads, speedy as well as doomy riffs, crushing rhythms, and occasional atmospheric keyboards.
This band has the ability to go from doomy death metal marches, like on the crushing "The Abyss", to more traditional melo-death material heard on "Eraser" and the brutal "Stillborn". Tagtgren's guitar work is very effective throughout, with multi-layered rhythms and harmonies setting the tonal pallette for his ripping leads, augmented by keyboards on some of the tracks. Many of these characterists come together on "The Departure", a tune featuring killer riffs, huge waves of keyboards and lead harmonies, not to mention clean & death vocals from Tagtgren. He sounds like a possessed Devin Townsend on the manic "War Within", the sledgehammer closing number, featuring many different vocal styles, mammoth guitar riffs, and plenty of atmospherics. Fans of Tagtgren's fascination with alien abduction and extraterrestrial's will no doubt get into the lyrical content here, which carries along in similar fashion.
It's nice to see that Hypocrisy have decided to stick around and continue to make a name for themselves in the melodic death metal market. The Arrival is a solid and enjoyable release from a veteran band, who now seem to be back on the upswing. Fans of Dark Tranquility, In Flames, Dimmu Borgir, Borknagar, Soilwork, Arch Enemy, and the like need to check this out.
b>Track Listing
1. Born Dead Buried Alive
2. Eraser
4. Slave to the Parasites
5. New World
6. Abyss
7. Dead Sky Dawning
8. Departure
9. War Within
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