On an icy-cold March 22, Hypocrisy was throwing a release party for their 12th studio album, End Of Disclosure, at Fryshuset in Stockholm.
As support bands, they had had the local talents of The Curse and Overtorture, but their shows had ended now and it was time for the band of the hour to make their entry...

For the entire evening we had seen a huge construction on the stage which was covered up in black sheets and causing much dismay for the support bands as there was no room left for them to perform, but as soon as the intro began rolling, Hypocrisy’s new stage setup was revealed to us, and let me tell you it looked cool!
In a way it built upon the one they had when touring for A Taste Of Extreme Divinity, but improved and incorporated with details of End Of Disclosure artwork. To each side, there was a stage banner depicting their latest alien artwork, but it was locked away behind a fence-like metallic grid with its own creepy coloured lights, and the extremely high drum-podium had a wide Hypocrisy name logo also hidden away by a metallic grid, this one standing at an angle, and four of the pieces were further adorned by huge metallic Hypocrisy crosses, and with more special lights inside the grid. Just look at the photos, I can honestly say it was the best looking stage setup I have seen at a Hypocrisy show, even ranking highly amongst all the shows I have seen regardless of the artist/band!
My one complaint, and this is quite insignificant, but still bothered me as everything else was so top-notch; the simplistic, stylish artwork used on the bass drums was slightly tilted on the right drum. It didn’t affect anything in a practical sense, but the pedantic perfectionist in me had a creeping feeling of wanting to turn it so it would be in line!

“We’ll play some old stuff and some new stuff, just take things as they come.”
- Peter Tägtgren (vocals/guitar)

As the intro was drawing to its end, the band entered the stage and even before they had the chance to begin playing the ongoing music was deafened behind a wall of appreciative shouts that the once again grown crowd let out when they saw the band members.
The boys of Hypocrisy didn’t stop long to reflect on this though, as they dived headfirst into the title track of the new album, a song that opened up for the party in a crushing way!
It didn’t take long to see that they were really pumped up for the show, as they were more energetic than I have ever seen them before – especially Tägtgren was much more active and mobile than I have seen him in the past. It wasn’t so much surprising me with new moves, but rather just improving and expanding on what was already there in a very sincere way that was believable and catchy.
Hypocrisy stayed with the new album in the second song, where they with a break continued on with the speedier Tales Of Thy Spineless, a special song this evening as the entire gig was professionally filmed to make a video for this song in a close future. I was surprised that this wasn’t mentioned at the time, as I would have believed that this would be something that would fire up the crowd even more, and make the footage all the more memorable if you were there, and enviable if you weren’t.

The new songs had had a positive effect on the crowd, but it was nothing compared to the welcome that Fractured Millennium got as soon as the well-known keyboard notes came out of the speakers – finally some real shouts and applause were heard in the small venue, and I even saw a few headbanging to it!
What followed was a setlist as surprising as it was positive – some irreplaceable classics were of course present, like the above mentioned Fractured Millennium, and Fire In The Sky as well as Roswell 47, but it was really the new old songs that made me drop my chin in astonishment. Never in a million years would I have guessed that we were to hear a song like Necronomicon, and the fact that Hypocrisy had chosen to replace the medley they’ve had going for some time now with the slower-paced songs, with a completely played through and through The Abyss. I used to like the medley actually, but hearing either of the songs that were in it before played in its entirety and on its own also really cemented the quality of said song.
Looking at the whole picture, this was an incredibly well-crafted setlist which was dynamic with its up- and down-tempo songs, and also came well about more new stuff as well as some older things. One song that helped with this point was Elastic Inverted Visions, one of my old favourites which I haven’t heard live for many a year now.

Sadly, it wasn’t quite enough for the audience, and even though I didn’t lie in my description about the reaction to Fractured Millennium, as well as a few others which had a similar reaction, people over all didn’t really do much more than nodding out of beat to the songs, and throw up a few hand signals between them. To be brutally honest, the Stockholm crowd was not living up to my expectations, and quite frankly they didn’t make themselves deserving of what was going on before them!
This of course made me question the decision not to mention the ongoing video-shoot even more, but it could of course be that the band was just too busy having a great time and hammering out songs to stop and think about it. It could easily look that way anyway.
The fact that the band was going to do al in its power to give some love for the audience could be seen in the fact that at the bottom of the setlist for the night, they had hand-written in an extra song, probably a last minute decision which would explain why it wasn’t typed like the others. The song was Eraser, and just like every other song of the night, Hypocrisy nailed it. What happened here though, or actually it had been brewing for a while, was that even though people weren’t very active during the songs that were played, they were more and more active between them, shouting and applauding in a big way. This meant that after Eraser, the Stockholm crowd weren’t going to give up and go home; no, they kept on shouting until the band was finally convinced to come back out on the stage. That this was not in the original plan of the band was easy to see as they walked around looking quite confused, although happy of course, and Tägtgren commented that they had no idea what to do next as they had nothing more prepared.
After a little bit of deliberation between the band members, Tägtgren announced that as a special, definitely last song they would play Fearless, regardless of whether or not it was a good way to end a show.
It was easy to see that this hadn’t been rehearsed like the others as they weren’t quite as tight here as they had been for the rest of the gig, and my favourite parts was when Tägtgren sidled over to Tomas Elofsson during his solo and looked over his shoulder with an expression that said something like; ”What the hell is going on here?!”
After this, the band and the concert was really done, and when there were no more things to throw of the stage, the guards friendly but firmly showed us that it was time to leave. As the bar (which only served “folk-öl”) had closed, there really wasn’t much to stick around for anyway.

A funny note, which had no real bearing on the concert as such except for an interesting trivia, was the amount of Hypocrisy and otherwise related musicians who were hanging out in the crowd – from the stage, Tägtgren picked out Lars Szöke, Hypocrisy’s original drummer, Jonas Österberg, Hypocrisy’s original guitarist and Mathias Kamijo, former live guitarist for both Hypocrisy and Pain, but other than that I can with certainty say that I could pick out David Wallin, drummer of Pain, Fredrik Andersson, drummer of Amon Amarth, and Nils ‘Dominator’ Fjellström, drummer of Dark Funeral, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more lurking around in the dark corners of the room as well.

This had no bearing on the gig itself though, as I already mentioned, and I would like to end with summing up that this was definitely one of the liveliest and most engaging Hypocrisy concerts I remember seeing, and Lunah (Lauridsen, our photographer) who incidentally had her 30th anniversary show with Hypocrisy this night, was quick to dub it the best one she had ever seen.
As we were about to see them again the day after in Gothenburg, I was very curious as to whether or not they would be able to top this power-performance, and I prayed that the audience would be better...

Setlist:

End Of Disclosure
Tales Of Thy Spineless
Fractured Millennium
Left To Rot
The Eye
The Abyss
Fire In The Sky
Necronomicon
Buried
United We Fall
44 Double Zero
Elastic Inverted Vision
Warpath
Roswell 47
Adjusting The Sun
Eraser
Encore:
Fearless