So I recently bought the reissue of Hypocrisys Abducted with 4 bonus live tracks. When I opened the booklet I realized there were only 2 pages with a picture of the band. No lyrics or anything. This is really pissing me off cause I get this alot with the Nuclear Blast reissues. It feels like they are lazy and cheap. Anyone else annoyed by this?

Yeah it can be annoying, I try to do a bit of research before making a purchase though.

Thing is I try to do that with everything I buy, but it feels almost impossible to find information on booklets for these kind of reissues. Not sure exactly why but that's the way it is.

I could come to a place like this forum and ask around about the release. If it sounds like crap then I would avoid it.

Someone who appreciates the band more than I do may be able to correct me on this, but I'm pretty sure that during this era Hypocrisy never did print any lyrics and that CD notes were minimal at best. I guess that bastard Tagtgren couldn't be persuaded to come up with anything significant for the reissue and that's all.

I remember someone complaining that the reissue of Penetralia had no lyrics, but neither did the original I used to own. I've also heard what Abom said, though I haven't seen original runs of any of the other albums.

I had no idea about this, maybe Nuclear Blast didn't have anything to put in the reissue. Can anyone who owns the original version of Abducted confirm this?

@TheOrbOfUncreation. Yeah that's a lesson for next time for sure.

no it's correct. Hypocrisy never had lyrics printed on booklets, they only started with Virus. In an interview that I read, Peter never had time to write down his lyrics for any of the previous albums, but for some reason he had time during the making of Virus, which he then printed in booklets.

I've not got A Taste Of Extreme Divinity yet so I don't know whether he's continued with the lyrics or not.

Oh, I see. Well then I can't really blame Nuclear Blast for not putting the lyrics in there. But I still think the booklet could have had a couple more pictures.

A Taste of Extreme Divinity does have lyrics. In the booklet there's one page per song or something like that.

A Taste of Extreme Divinity indeed has the lyrics, as does Virus. These are the only two full albums they've done which they've released the lyrics to.

They also released The Final Chapter, which famously included the lyrics for the song The Final Chapter, and that's it. I've heard some got one of the Penetralia reissues and it had some of the lyrics with it, but not all of them. This could be bullshit though, as I've never seen the reissue. Could be true, though - Peter seems odd that way.

But most of the lyrics you read (in particular, Penetralia - Hypocrisy) are pretty much only fan interpretations. Peter said he didn't like how his English was on the old albums, hence why they're not printed.

From what I've been able to make out (and some of the interpretations are pretty close... others are far off or not even written in the same language, as far as I'm concerned), they're not that bad for a band that has a lyricist that spoke Swedish before English.

I'd like to see the original albums with lyrics, but I doubt it'll happen unless Nuclear Blast miraculously convinces Peter to release them...

Just take the online interpretations and see if they sound right to you - make a game of it. At worst, you'll waste time and at best, you might be more correct than others.

Thanks for a very informative posting. I didn't know Peter was this way about his lyrics. I have the reissue of Penetralia and it doesn't contain any lyrics at all.

Thanks for that. I've heard they do, they don't, but no one seems to be able to produce a copy of it with the lyrics. I almost got it (despite owning the original) just because of that little rumor.

And not a problem as far as the information. I remember reading interviews where he just wasn't comfortable saying what the lyrics were, so that's what I've always assumed. The last two albums do have the lyrics, and some of the lyrics posted on the Arrival album info here seem to have very close (if not fully official) lyrics (some point to Dan Swano as co-author on some sites - DarkLyrics.com if I'm not mistaken), but if you listen to Penetralia (or Osculum, or any other album before Abducted for that matter), and then look at the lyrics as "interpreted" - way off, even though I can't tell you what the real ones are.

I'm pretty sure the lyrics wouldn't be "JESUS ??? ??? I ??? GOD IS A LIE" or whatever nonsense is listed. That would be your first indicator.

I remember (in the pseudo-infancy of the internet) looking up lyrics for Hypocrisy and Obituary, among others. And the ones I found always had those question marks, which is pretty much an indicator that they came from an old site, where people used to work on them together in small groups for fan sites (when they were usually more reliable than any "official" site for any given band).

But I digress...

I've been able to hear bits and pieces, but Abducted becomes easier, as Peter's enunciation really developed from The Fourth Dimension to Abducted, so the later ones aren't that hard to figure out. So, any that you look up from that general era onwards should have at least somewhat accurate lyrics. But for the first three albums? Good luck: no one knows completely, nor will they unless Peter has a change of heart.

And 6Xul66, not saying anything bad about you, but either the interviewer made something up (it happens), misinterpreted Peter, or Peter wanted to avoid the question / move on. If you listen carefully, he did the vocals on the Rest in Pain demos, and they sound similar (not identical) to the original full-lengths and EPs that came later. And as Hypocrisy had a full time vocalist until Osculum Obscenum (now the vocalist for Dark Funeral), and he had the lyrics (or at least basic ideas) for those demos, he had to have written them down somewhere - being in a couple bands, I know no one has ever told me, "The lyrics are blah blah blah - don't write that down! Just sing it!" See what I'm saying there?

Unlike Obituary, I'm sure there are legitimate lyrics for almost all (okay, all) of Hypocrisy's songs. But picking out the pieces I have from Penetralia, they're juvenile at best. Not that this is a bad thing... the young naivety of it definitely has its charms.

And yeah, I'd be a Hypocrisy "fan boy", I guess, since the early 90s (when I saw the video for Left to Rot, I believe, on the Death is Just the Beginning video comp). That might explain my fanaticism for some of Nuclear Blast's earlier stuff, too (Pungent Stench, Winter, etc).

Nuclear Blast did have a lot of great stuff in the early 90s, that's certainly true.

And while i'm not really a Hypocrisy fan, "Penetralia" and especially "Osculum Obscenum" are great albums. My favourite song on "Penetralia" is probably "Led by Satanism"...such a cool riff.

Yer I get what your saying. I couldn't exactly remember what I'd read, but I thought I remembered him saying something along the lines of him never really officially writing his lyrics down but rather writing bits and pieces of them on scraps of paper or napkins etc.

My brother had the original Abducted and I believe it had a fold out poster. Nothing too special I guess but probably a little better than the reissue.

I have an original pressing of Abducted and there are no lyrics. I do remember reading interviews with Peter a few years later saying he was embarrassed by his lyrics and thats why he wouldn't print them.