After reviving HYPOCRISY from its self-induced coma, Peter Tägtgren seems to have tasted blood again, because "Into The Abyss" is the second album since then, which has NOT turned out the way that many might have expected.

Not much of the doomy, dark melody of "Hypocrisy" has remained, but here Death Metal reins supreme again, and for sure not mellowed by Keyboards, at least in the majority of the tracks!

Already the opening "Legions Descend" blows all expectations of another epic track like "Roswell 47" or "Fractured Millennium" away, with its fast Death Metal with thrashy guitars. "Blinded" continues where the first track had left off and only on third position we find the first track that conjures up the same dark atmosphere as known from the last album with "Resurrected". Following this, brutal Death Metal-attacks like "Total Eclipse" and "Sodomized" go hand in hand with mini-epics a la "Fire In The Sky" and "Unfold The Sorrow".

But THE epic track in tradition of "Roswell 47" and "Fractured Millennium" can still be found, this time not as the first, but the last song. With "Deathrow (No Regrets)" Tägtgren, Hedlund and Szöke have created another highlight of the band's history in my opinion.

As so often before, HYPOCRISY have surprised with an album nobody really had expected this way and just as often they have managed to meet the expectations nevertheless.