Hypocrisy - Pleasures of Molestation
Review: Rougher cuts of tracks from "Osculum Obscenum," pre-released to tide over Amerikan fans, show the band retaining a member not present for the final LP and cutting the smoother more ambitious work of the album to come into the raw and stripped-down style of the first Hypocrisy album. More guttural vocals, an emphasis on victim-battering cadence and a strategic limitation of melody to areas of dynamic variation from the rushing and pummeling power chord streams this band unleash in order to provide formative material for change.
While the compositional infrastructures remain essentially similar to these tracks as appearing on the second album, an emphasis on more rugged instrumentalism and the gruff immediacy of the rendering of practiced but still new works clears away some of the refinement and moderation in tempo that would distinguish the album as an aesthetic advance for death metal. Mostly of speeding verse riffs which slide into tempo change or drop into contrapuntal phrasing and texture, these songs give "Osculum Obscenum" context in past to match its own establishment of future.