Written by:	drynwhyl
Published:	November 07, 2013
Event:	Hypocrisy: End Of Disclosure Tour 2013 (Part 2)
Location:	Tapper, Tallinn, Estonia
Galleries:	Hypocrisy - Tapper, Tallinn, Estonia, 15.09.2013 by Ivor (39)

So what do some people do on rainy autumn Sunday evening? Read a book? Watch some television? Play the latest Grand Theft Auto on their favourite console? On one such Sunday evening in September quite a number of metalheads gathered in Tallinn to listen to some death metal. To quote Mr Tägtgren from that evening - "It's Sunday but who gives a f**k!" Wise words indeed, unless you fast forward 10 hours and a few beers too many later and find yourself not in the best of shapes for heading to work. But that's a whole other story, back to that Sunday evening.





The concert started with an eerie number of doppelgängers of Estonian bands in Hatesphere: the bass player strongly resembled M. Divine, the former bass player of Loits, the drummer looked a lot like Timukas from Bestia and to top it off, the vocalist was pretty much the basketball-shorts-wearing lost twin brother of Korraldajaonu from Winny Puhh. (As I discovered myself amidst these kinds of thoughts I really should have taken a closer and deeper look at the ingredient list of the Trooper Beer I was familiarising myself quite successfully.) Then Korraldajaonu from Hatesphere agreed that it's quite a bummer that it's Sunday but one should look at the bright side - the next gig would be at our neighbours in Riga and that would be on a Monday evening. Not sure it makes much difference though.

I was introduced to Hypocrisy with Abducted which is, with its follow-up The Final Chapter, my favourite Hypocrisy albums. Luckily they played a tune from both of them in Tallinn. Frankly, I expected them to play "Evil Invaders" too. For some reason I was pretty sure that they would, at least just as sure that they would play "Roswell 47", or to be lyrically exact: "Tallinn 47". Although it's quite an old and easy trick to do - adjusting the chorus or some lines in the song to the context of the concert at hand, it still is a bit heart-warming and a welcome gesture in any case.





What better song is there to sum up Hypocrisy's favourite lyrical theme as well as their typical musical landscape than "Evil Invaders"? Oddly enough, I just recently discovered that it's not really their own song, but a Razor (a Canadian thrash band from the eighties) cover. In this light I can also understand why they discarded it from their tracklist - if you have been active for over 20 years and have 12 full-length albums then surely you tend to favour your own songs. But "Evil Invaders" sounds just so good in Hypocrisy's interpretation and it suits them so well that it is still hard to believe it's not their own song. But on the bright side - they did play "Adjusting the Sun" so let's say it was close enough.

Before the concert, as I was re-listening some Hypocrisy's "newer" albums I found myself contemplating what is the criteria for choosing the songs to play on a concert. "Let the Knife do the Talking" would have been a good candidate in my opinion - a nice catchy tune, a bit pop-like even. But then again, Peter Tägtgren has a whole other band for these kind of songs.





Fair credit should be given to the guys turning the levers and knobs behind the mixer table. The sound was clear and precise, occasionally even to the point that they sounded pretty much like on the album. The low-end could have been a notch better but I guess that's a trade-off you get for the clarity achieved by triggered drums and compressed guitars. The alternative would have been a rich and noisy mess of over-amplified down-tuned guitars and blasting bass drum patterns. Mix that with some fast death metal beats and the size (or in case of Tapper, the lack thereof) of the venue and the end result couldn't be pretty. Thankfully that was not the case. For example, the carrying bass riff on "The Eye" was nicely distinguishable throughout the whole song, just like on the record.

On the whole, Hypocrisy were a very well-oiled machine work with their powerful and flawless performance. Perhaps even too perfect or a bit sterile but this impression may very well be from my lack of experience in the field of good-quality death metal shows. So bring the next one on! Preferably not on a Sunday though, I'd rather leave those nights for some jazz or GTA V.





Tracklist:
1. End of Disclosure (End of Disclosure)
2. Tales of Thy Spineless (End of Disclosure)
3. Fractured Millenium (Hypocrisy)
4. Left to Rot (Penetralia)
5. The Abyss (The Arrival)
6. The Eye (End of Disclosure)
7. Valley of the Damned (A Taste of Extreme Divinity)
8. Fire in the Sky (Into the Abyss)
9. Necronomicon (Osculum Obscenum)
10. Buried (Abducted)
11. Elastic Inverted Visions (Hypocrisy)
12. 44 Double Zero (End of Disclosure)
13. War-Path (Virus)
Encore:
14. The Gathering (Abducted)
15. Roswell 47 (Abducted)
16. Adjusting the Sun (The Final Chapter)
17. Eraser (The Arrival)