Catch 22

The mainstream explosion of the alt-metal/nu-metal/metalcore scene in the US during the late 1990s / early 2000s made waves on the other side of the Big Pond – and especially in Sweden, among death metal bands that had – in turn – provided more than a few sonic hints for the development of the new American heavy metal scene. In Flames are often cited as an example of Swedish death metal act who caught a fancy for the new brand of American metal (and got bashed for it), but surely Hypocrisy must have heard the very same siren’s call when they wrote the songs for their eighth LP, Catch 22. Do they deserve a similar bashing too?

Well, for sure you won’t find many people calling Catch 22 a resounding success, plagued as it is by weak songwriting, inconsistent musical direction and subpar production. Hypocrisy themselves must have been well aware of these problems when they decided to re-release the album six years later remastered and with re-recorded vocals. Although the 2008 version fixes some of the most glaring issues, the album’s core problems lie deep in its songwriting and cannot be fixed by simple cosmetics.

There are two major issues, in my view. First, the album feels utterly incoherent - almost as if Hypocrisy weren’t quite sure whether or not to answer that American siren’s call, after all. Some songs almost completely give in, embracing a whirlwind of simple repetitive riffs, barebone rhythmic grooves, and punkish vocals (sometimes guttural, sometimes semi-clean and whiny) that do nothing to conceal the band’s new influences (“Don't Judge Me”, “Destroyed”, “Turn the Page”). However, the album also includes a bunch of songs that take us straight back to the “classic” Hypocrisy sound – dark, gothic-infused death metal that can be both epic and melancholic at the same time (“On the Edge of Madness” – the best song here, “Uncontrolled”, “All Turns Black”). The contrast is jarring to the point one may feel these are tracks taken from different periods in the band’s discography. In a couple of cases (“Hatred”, “Another Dead End (for Another Dead Man)”), Hypocrisy try and merge the two aspects of their sound together with mixed results, but then elsewhere they also wander in even less comprehensible directions (the doom-meets- Motörhead vibes of “Seeds of the Chosen One”).

Lack of direction is almost always a death sentence in my book, but here things are possibly made worse by a rough-and-ready songwriting approach that makes me wonder whether Tägtgren, Hedlund and Szöke were actually fully invested in the writing of this album. Some tracks, in particular, feel almost improvised – as if the band wrote them straight in the recording studio, without giving too much thought to the final product (“A Public Puppet”, “All Turns Black”). The stripped-down arrangements and raw production contribute in giving the album a primitive feel that could be described as either “live-like” or “demo-like”, depending on how benevolent you may want to be.

Going back to the opening paragraph, I won’t lie and confess that I have never been a fan of the blending of metalcore/alt-metal influences into the classic death metal sound. As such, I largely lost touch with one of my old-time favorite bands, In Flames, after their alt-metal/metalcore-infused 2002’s album, Reroute to Remain. Yet even that album stands out as a massive accomplishment compared to the messy state of Hypocrisy’s Catch 22. The fact that Hypocrisy will quickly retrace their steps on subsequent records (while In Flames won’t) confirms that this is perhaps best seen as a slip of the mind that Hypocrisy can be forgiven for, given the otherwise high quality of most of their remaining discography.