Hypocrisy isn’t exactly a band that frequents Copenhagen much, so when they announced that they’d be stopping by on their Mass Hallucination tour, to call us pleasantly surprised would be quite the understatement! Not only a tour, but a headlining tour, and a headlining tour with good tour mates! We were so ready for this…

“Swedish or English? You understand Swedish, we never understand Danish…”
- Peter Tägtgren (vocals/guitar)

Well, at this point we had seen all that the tour mates had to offer, and now we were ready for the main course of the evening. The lights dimmed, a rumbling sound leeched out of the speakers, and after a short while the band kicked things off with They Will Arrive from 2021’s Worship, the band’s latest offering at this point in time. The fact that they didn’t have a new album to promote made for some interesting possibilities with the setlist, and as we would soon discover, Hypocrisy had brought both live staples and far less played material with them, both old and new. I was especially glad to see that Deathrow (No Regrets) had been brought back onboard after a prolonged absence, but even with its inclusion, it was odd to not have The Final Chapter in there. Oh well, you can’t have it all, I guess.

The members, who’ve all been around for a while now, were ready to deliver. They were lively on stage, had an air of enjoyment about them, and were more than willing to see and engage the crowd, something that not all the bands this evening could say. There wasn’t much time for chitchat, as one song quickly took the place of another, but Tägtgren did manage to cram a few words in there as the show went on, and at the same time, there’s something to be said for keeping the tempo so intense and unrelenting.
Even though it was close to wall to wall music, that didn’t mean there wasn’t also play time for the band. There was posing both individually and in pairs, and once we got all three in the front lined up perfectly. Coming round to Roswell 47, Tägtgren and Michael Hedlund even had a battle of the butts!

Even though Amager Bio wasn’t exactly sold out, with the balcony area having been closed off even, there were still a lot of people here to see Hypocrisy. Thankfully, my misgivings about people showing up for Abbath were proven wrong, and while the Danes (and yes, there were quite a few Swedes as well) were clearly enjoying themselves, they only showed it moderately, with a few bobbing heads and some shouting between songs as their main modus of appreciation. When reaching Eraser however, the energy couldn’t be contained any longer, and a nice little mosh opened up, something the security team promptly put a stop to. The gates had been opened however, and with the next track, the mosh was back again, bigger and stronger than before, and this time it was allowed to run its course for the rest of the show.

After a proper farewell, with the ritual handing over of sticks and picks, accompanied by Drained played as an outro over the speakers, the night came to an end, and we could only hope that Hypocrisy doesn’t wait another eight years before visiting our fair capitol. Because this was a demonstration of power by a band full of gusto, and we want; nay, we need more!

Setlist:

They Will Arrive
Fire In The Sky
Inferior Devoties
Chemical Whore
Carved Up
Children Of The Gray
End Of Disclosure
Killing Art
Eraser
Deathrow (No Regrets)
Adjusting The Sun
Fractured Millennium
War-Path
Roswell 47
Paled Empty Sphere