Don't Judge Me

Having rerecorded their somewhat controversial 2002 album, Catch 22, Hypocrisy released, in addition to the full Catch 22 (V2.0.08), a 7'' single featuring the opening track of the album, Don’t Judge Me, as well as the bonus track which used to only be available on the Japanese version of the original Catch 22, Nowhere to Run.

Side A has the rather uninspired track Don’t Judge Me, which was the weakest track on the original album and, although it improved since the rerecording, it’s still the worst track on the album. Fortunately the irritating drumming of the original was rendered somewhat more tolerable and the production difference helped the guitar work a whole lot, but despite this and the slight vocal improvement, the entire song is still weak. Why the band decided to market this as their first (and probably only) single is a mystery to me, since there are much better tracks on the album, such as Destroyed or Another Dead End (For Another Dead Man). One last notable difference between the original and this is that, at the end of the last scream Peter does, the two words he said in the original song are gone (Jesus and a second word which is incomprehensible).

Side B features the aforementioned track Nowhere to Run, which I’ve never actually heard in its original version so a comparison is impossible. It’s a considerably slower track, on par with Hypocrisy’s usual mid-tempo masterpieces of the past such as Fire In The Sky or Fractured Millennium, even though Nowhere to Run doesn’t reach the heights of its predecessors. It’s just a typical Hypocrisy track with the deep and powerful vocals Peter Tägtgren always does best when the songs aren’t played at breakneck speed.

This single doesn’t feature any excusive material, as both tracks are the first and last songs off Catch 22 (V2.0.08), but the nice artwork of the picture disk make it somewhat worthwhile, depending on how much of a Hypocrisy fan you actually are. The huge flaw of this single is the choice of the main song, which quite plainly sucks.