### Hypocrisy: Hell over Sofia - 20 years of chaos and confusion

#### 12/12/11 || Smalley

Bulgaria may not that be that big of a metal country (relatively speaking), and a city called “Sofia” may not be the first place you’d think of for a classic metal band to perform, but unexpected venues aside, the Sofians show just as much energy as any crowd from Wacken on Hypo’s new live release “Hell over Sofia”, and Hypocrisy themselves put in just as much energy in their performances; the riffing and solos are uniformly intense, Tägtgren’s growling is evil ‘n guttural, just the way we like it (hell, he sounds better here than on some studio recordings!), and Horgh pounds away on his kit as furiously as ever.

Track selection-wise, “Hell…” has a good cross-section of Hypocrisy’s formidably numerous output; it (predictably) starts off with “Valley of the damned” and “Hang him high” off the latest album, but they’re both awesome cuts, so no complaints, and after that, they dig in the past for selections off of their self-titled, “The final chapter”, “Abducted”, and so on back, fortunately, not playing too much from those underwhelming 2000-2005 releases. They make everything here sound great regardless of album of origin, and even play some shit here faster than their studio versions! The live sound they went for here might be a lil’ too clean compared to the studio, but it’s still heavy enough when needed, and sounds good in its own way (especially those synths Pete just can’t stay away from), so “Hell over Sofia”‘s definitely a damn good live recording, all in all.

8.5/10: A fun listen for the fans (which should be everyone…).