Review by Ben for Hypocrisy - Osculum Obscenum (1993)

Hypocrisy's debut album Penetralia, while being a slightly immature release, showed good potential that this Swedish band could one day create some seriously good death metal. I had high hopes that Osculum Obscenum might be the point where they began to make that prediction a reality, but I have to say it hasn't quite done enough for me to call it an essential album. It is however an improvement over Penetralia in a few areas, particularly when it comes to the riffs and certainly worth checking out for anyone into straight forward death metal.

The lyrics and vocals are still a bit cheesy with Masse really sounding like he's forcing his vocal chords to do things they just aren't capable of. When he growls, he's decent enough but when he screams it just sounds a bit crap to my ears. While I'm complaining I must state that the leads are not up to scratch either. Check out the solo on Exclamation of a Necrofag for an example of how dodgy they are. But even with all this negativity, I do enjoy the album. The riffs are dark and chunky, the drumming is more than adequate, and the overall atmosphere is where it should be.

Hypocrisy would get much, much better than this. As enjoyable as it is, it's all a bit derivative and the genre was moving ahead in leaps and bounds during the period when this was released. I think I've always enjoyed the band when they are more epic and melodic, rather than albums like this where creativity takes a back seat to pure brutality and darkness. There are bands that do that better! Highlights for me are Pleasure for Molestation, Osculum Obscenum and Inferior Devoties.