HYPOCRISY - The Arrival
January 13, 2004, 20 years ago
(Nuclear Blast)
At this point, you are either vaguely pleased with the comfortable, no surprises feeling you get when you listen to Peter churn those gothic chords that once strafed In Flames albums, along, of course, with all the Hypocrisy albums from the second two-thirds of the catalogue. That is my favourite part of The Arrival (these songs sound like a big old wooden ship creaking), along with a sometimes ambivalent feeling about Tagtgren's caustic caw. But these are also dismal dismissal points. The Arrival contains (defiantly?) nothing new, Peter going for his tried and true yet shrieky and fatiguing screechy production, a re-use of alien themes, and like I said, those vocals and those almost doomy tower of power chords. I can't exult, nor can I wholly dismiss - after all, through tireless, arcing revisitations, Peter has cornered his own boxed off and boxy, hungover and headbanging metal turf.
