Two years before Hypocrisy’s self-titled album, the band decided to call it quits. Simply titled “The Final Chapter,” Hypocrisy’s stamp on the metal world was about to fade into distant memory. However, their strong fan base had a different idea and Hypocrisy would live on in metal for years to come. 1999 brought back a new revitalized band, and an album that sounded different than anything they had done before. Feeling a bit more atmospheric but still remaining vicious, the album put the band right into the heart of Swedish metal once more.

At a time when I was first jumping from the simple AC/DC and ZZ Top sounds that my father introduced me at a young age, Hypocrisy was one of the first metal bands that brutally struck my metal nerve. The keyboard introduction in Fractured Millennium shows that Hypocrisy was ready to either please many, or disappoint. It was an atmosphere that Hypocrisy never really began with in previous albums, but it’s melodic and commanding guitar licks clearly stated that the band was here to stay. More adrenaline filled tracks such as Apocalyptic Hybrid which follows, takes the speed up a great notch. The eerily pleasing harmonization of the guitars is just beautiful with the nastiest touch.

Slower tracks do make up some of this album, and none are better than Elastic Inverted Vision. It clearly is no ordinary death metal album. In fact, it is more altered than anything Hypocrisy had recorded before, and to this day still holds a firm place in their discography. The screaming chorus that makes this song shine, and the catchy guitar leads make for a completely organic metal experience. Reversed Reflections proved to be the catchiest song on the entire album. I can’t even fathom the amount of times I had to repeat this track when I was younger to be satisfied to move onto the next track due to Peter’s overwhelmingly catchy vocals and solid guitar writing. The album does a fantastic job in keeping you guessing, like the song Until the End, which completely immerses your mind into a sonic state, and has some of the most substantially emotional vocals Peter has ever recorded.

To some, this album could hold its place as the band’s magnum opus, but to some it just served as a fitting return of the melodic death metal titans. It’s quite hard to start this band off on the wrong foot with just about any album you pick up despite maybe Catch 22 which sparked a lot of criticism and eventually lead to a re-recording. Their self-titled album sparked new life for Hypocrisy, and with the fans disheartened over the fact that they would not return, this album appropriately marked a giant and permanent return.