Band:	Hypocrisy
Album:	Abducted
Style:	Melodic death metal
Release date:	February 13, 1996
Guest review by:	Uirapuru

01. The Gathering
02. Roswell 47
03. Killing Art
04. The Arrival Of The Demons (Part 2)
05. Buried
06. Abducted
07. Paradox
08. Point Of No Return
09. When The Candle Fades
10. Carved Up
11. Reflection
12. Slippin' Away
13. Drained

This release represents another case in which an album serves as prompt for a successful new direction in a band's sound. Abducted can be considered the cleaner, brighter and slightly emotional twin brother of The Fourth Dimension. And although the filthy twin was the truly responsible for the primordial subtle clues of this new sound directions, it was on 1996's Abducted that everything was organized to redirect a higher percentage of all stylistic, lyrical and audio features towards this inevitable incipient path.

One of the circumstances that had enabled Hypocrisy to strengthen these different sound approaches was the departure of Magnus Bromberg (in order to join Dark Funeral as "Emperor Magus Caligula") which has allowed Peter Tägtgren to take over the lead vocals in 1994. Tägtgren's voice, in both ''twin'' albums, along with his famous admiration for alien novels and reports of assumed experiences with extraterrestrial entities, had literally dragged the band further from the old school Death Metal roots.

Further but not faded, as the brutal remnants complement a large portion of the album, such as ''Killing Art'' and ''Abducted'' are pure Death Metal, and along with the melodic atmospheric features had basically shaped the essence that defines Hypocrisy as a different band. And this essence is of a Melodic Death Metal without correlation to Gothenburg Metal (at least until the mid-2000s), which Abducted represents perfectly through 70% of its time-length. Meaning that at least seven tracks presents the same formula with slow paced catchy riffs, a simple drum work accompanying the flow conducted by guitar and bass, atmospheric short solos, and Peter's ''alien'' shrieks, which are hard to explain, but that's what they are? ''alien''. The other 30% congregates the aforementioned ''pure Death Metal'' tracks, and the fantastic closing trio of the album.

This triad simply assembles the final ten minutes into a melancholic eerie atmosphere, absorbing the listener and forever marking the band's sonority. Starting with the instrumental ''Reflections'', reaching the climax with ''Slippin' Away'' and closing the album with the reflexive and calm ''Drained'', displaying for the first time Peter Tägtgren's talent with clean vocals, although heavily modified.

It was nice to observe how Hypocrisy has managed to utilize this sonority defined in 1994. Abducted, being one the earliest steps, may not be the most solid release, as the tracks seem randomly distributed through the album despite being sort of a conceptual release and the sudden end of some songs was a poor and annoying feature of production. But it was a valuable and successful attempt from a band that was starting to carve its name among the greatest of Melodic Death Metal.