Catch 22

After what was on "Catch 22" I have no doubts completely. "Into The Abyss" - despite the fact that it kept a high level - is a disc that serves only as a "touch-off" for those who at the early 00's considered Hypocrisy to be an increasingly weaker and softening band - and they were mostly right about it. With the release of "Catch 22", the Swedes went so far back into melo-death regions that it was strange that the fans of their cds before "Into..." did not attempt to crucify the authors. Well, by this release, Tägtgren and the rest of the band decided to expand their melo-death style with influences from such genres as groove, industrial or...even nu metal.

As you can easily guess, all of these novelties resulted in a totally incoherent and meaningless album. It lacks sophisticated melodies, riffs too often drift into newly-fashionable areas, the atmosphere is not too thrilling, and what the band put the most into...it has nothing to do with the style of Hypocrisy. Well, even the greatest fans of Swedish discography will have a problem with assimilating this material! And don't get me wrong, all this criticism is by no means a result of the complexity of the material or some kind of desire to break out of patterns. Unfortunately, on the contrary - from simplicity and too many clichés.

There aren't many highlights on this album, maybe "Don't Judge Me" (deceptively good to start an album), "Another Dead End (For Another Dead Man)" (something like "The Final Chapter") or "All Turns Black" (this one is extremely light, but successful). Well, it's difficult to say anything good about the others, except that they tire and seem to be going nowhere. Perhaps they will be good for those who are looking for something in the atmosphere of Rammstein ("On The Edge Of Madness", "Uncontrolled"), Korn ("Turn The Page") or even what Peter did in his Pain ("Hatred", "Public Puppet"), but also here I do not guarantee, considering how stylistically distorted this material is.

To make matters worse, there is also the production aspect, something that already scares you away from the first seconds of the album and definitely made the worst impression. You can hear that "Catch 22" just wasn't paid too much attention in this respect. The guitars lack power and the drums rumble like from a grindcore demo. In this case, a plastic production from "Abducted" would be much better.

So it's hard to clearly define who this "Catch 22" will actually appeal to. Occasional metal listeners may be pleased with the melodiousness of the material, but they will not like production, while fans of the previous releases will totally screw it up. On the other hand, it's not weird. Too many things are missing on "Catch 22".

Originally on: https://subiektywnymetal.blogspot.com/2020/07/hypocrisy-catch-22-2002.html