Catch 22

I fucking hate trash can snares. Their tinny bonks are screeches that pierce my ears and sap the music around it into a void of atonality. I can only think of a handful of albums that are subject to these derailing tocks that I do like, but that's because the music leading it is of supreme quality. Catch-22 is not one of these albums. Not even close, but the album is definitely Hypocrisy's weakest album.

By in large, Hypocrisy's spacey atmosphere, trancelike leads, and sardonic riffs are present. However, so is this banal modern In Flames / groove tenor that morphs Catch-22 into self-parody. It's a strange case of a band using other bands' formulas to imitate themselves while stopping just short of making a mockery. To namedrop the other band, there are some Slipknot influences in here (coincidentally at the worst moments). There's that and the perfunctory, factory-direct plodding of Reroute To Remain In Flames. It's a combination that Hypocrisy somehow attempted to keep from failing miserably. Compositionally, these songs aren't completely gutter-level rubbish. They aren't fantastic or equally dreadful (bar a song or two on both ends), either, but a batch of songs this middling and flogged by muddy production does suck.

Take "Don't Judge Me" and "Turn The Page" as two examples of rap-rock esque leads, slapstick bass, and tock-as-fuck snares all competing to grate. It reminds me a lot of Sepultura during this era: bitter, mucky, and boring by the very definition. Riffs are thrown without any coherency and vocals are spat with automated dryness. A step up from these two is most of the rest, which is just meandering riffs fleeced with that Abyss Studio bite. A very digitized and compressed sound is achieved this way, piling together this grubby collage of spastic aggression. The core is Hypocrisy, but everything else points to an artificial clone of one.

At this album's very best creativity is something that's very similar to the album following this one, The Arrival. Something like "Uncontrolled" and its steady tempo, dynamic leads, and rigid riffs. "On The Edge Of Madness" is another example as it strives for cryptic atmosphere and ghostly vocals - traits of Tägtgren's gloomy singing (I try not to remember what he's singing because these lyrics are shit). Instead, it ends up sounding like ex-Norther screamer Petri Lindroos and his frail exhales, but the song is decent. "Seeds Of The Chosen One" and "All Turns Black" mark a greater use of cleans that bask in leisure with compatible rhythms as it yearns for catchiness. Something along these lines, with the proper production and writing, could propel these two to The Arrival-level, which is essentially what these songs are (just inferior, bastardized forms). That kind of melody and direction is what The Arrival capitalizes on, but this album loses itself to its own half-assery.

The songs typify poor flow, and as such the album loses cohesion. The Arrival fixes most of these problems and as a result it became a memorable (albeit unoriginal) album. Most of the problems stem from poor production, but the songwriting itself prohibits this from being on the same level as every other Hypocrisy release. The only advice is to hear the re-recorded version of Catch-22. The re-recording doesn't rewrite history, but it makes this album listenable at best - the way it should have been.