Hypocrisy
The Final Chapter (Nuclear Blast)
by Scott Hefflon
This is not the hypocrisy I longed to see die in my lifetime. The death of this Hypocrisy is a damn shame, a real loss to heavy music. Peter Tägtgren is one of the most talented, varied musicians/producers in aggressive music. Thankfully his Midas touch can be found elsewhere. Truthfully, The Final Chapter sounds like a smattering of the best of Peter’s other projects. This is certainly not a front-to-back, go-for-the-throat death album as in days of old (old Hypocrisy and any Abyss record, and now, evidently, War – see review elsewhere in this issue), nor is it total cyber/tech/thrash/industrial metal (such as PAIN, a truly inspiring, darkly melodic blend of haunting, processed vocals and sweeping Doom keyboards), nor is it the kind of post-death symphonic black metal that’s infecting the metal masses like a black plague (and I mean that in a good way). The Final Chapter may as well be a greatest hits record, only more along the lines of “Say, Peter, give us what you’ve got, regardless of style, and we’ll call it the last Hypocrisy record.” In a way, the projects were beginning to overlap anyway. Purity is not always such a good thing. These guys (by no means do I mean to dismiss the obvious talents of bassist Mikael Hedlund and drummer Lars Szoke) are just so incredibly prolific they needed multiple bands to capture the ideas they had in material with a unified name, image, and fan-base. Otherwise (contrary to popular opinion) an album such as The Final Chapter is so varied, so confusing, so across-the-map, that it lacks cohesion as one band’s record. It closes with “The Final Chapter” (the only appropriate time to put the title track at the end, I’d ‘magine), a song so beautifully sorrowful it’ll bring tears to your eyes. Included, for a change, are lyrics, and I kinda wish they hadn’t printed ’em. Normally I’d shred a band for writing/printing mediocre, typo-ridden and grammatically incorrect lyrics about alien abduction, pointlessness, hate, and despair, but beneath the language barrier and annoyingly juvenile fascinations lies an artist in torment. And that transcends petty grievances.
