Original Portuguese version at Backstage Music.

It’s not the first time that this happens, but I confess I didn’t expect it to happen with HYPOCRISY: the show, initially booked for Hard Club’s Room #1, was transferred to Room #2 due weak ticket sales. Sure, they’d played in Lisboa the night before, so the fans didn’t gather in one show alone, and they had visited our country in April last year, at Steel Warriors Rebellion, but as Peter Tägtgren is the legend that he is, I thought the Northern metal community would find a way of cheating the crisis somehow in order to see these gentlemen.

It wasn’t a big surprise that HYPOCRISY opened the gig with “End Of Disclosure”. And here the euphoria of the crowd was crystal clear. From the very first minute they sang along both to “the old shit” as to “the new shit” – using Tägtgren‘s own words as to what they would be playing.

Tägtgren kept the talking to a minimum, and even though I appreciate good communication, the truth is that this gig was so epic that the music itself created an empathy relationship between the band and the audience. Still some themes were introduced, and he even joked in “Necronomicon” by saying that this was a song that bass player Mikael Hedlund had written many years ago when he was still “young and beautiful”. He also mentioned the heat there in the room, in Porto; that the previous night in Lisboa had been hot already, but it was hotter in here. The crowd screamed loud, to which Tägtgren replied “you like it hot, don’t you?”, and a new scream was heard, louder, as now we were talking about atmosphere and not weather. Something that personally I also appreciated was that the frontman said “Porto” and “Lisboa” instead of “Oporto”, “Lisbon” or “Lissabon”, as usually Swedes and foreigners in general do. I liked it that he was thoughtful enough and used the local terms.

It’s impossible to name a highlight, or mentioning this or that classic without being unfair to the ones unmentioned. So I’ll post a photo of the setlist, adding that “Roswell / Porto 47” was the first song of the encore and that it was preceded by the intro “The Gathering”.

I must also say that I’ve seen many concerts in Room #2 and this was by far the one with the best sound. So the shame for this gig not taking place in Room #1 is only because such band deserved a bigger audience. No need for better, though, as the somewhat 300 people who were there that night were the personification of the expression “few but great”.

www.hypocrisy.cc