HYPNOSIA, Horror Infernal (2012, I Hate)

The skull:
We’ve seen the wolf skullet before, but here we have a skeleskullet, which is a mighty thing indeed. How he gets a comb through those bony locks is a mystery to all but the skull. The dude sporting it is certainly excited, his mouth ahowl and his eyes aflame. Or maybe he’s just angry that the Rogaine he applied to his dome didn’t maintain his magnificent skelebangs. I guess I’d be pissed, too, if I was in that position, but that shit is probably covered by the national health system in Sweden, so it’s not like he’s out a lot of kronor. And in any case, you still look cool, Hypnosia skull, so buck up!

The music:
It walks like a Brazilian duck and it quacks like a Brazilian duck, but this duck is Swedish. Go figure. Seriously, the band name, the logo, the artwork, and the music all sound like Brazilian retro deaththrash, although maybe this is slightly better produced than you’d expect from something genuinely from South America, especially considering these tunes are mostly early demo tracks. Of course, the music basically sounds German, and I’m especially reminded of mid 90s Sodom, filthy and perverted, but Hypnosia’s riffs are a bit trickier than anything Sodom was slinging at the time. A healthy Sepultura influence surely accounts for that, though. This is really just on the wrong side of the line separating “too raw” from “just raw enough” for me, but anyone with a moderate tolerance for grimy third world thrash would surely find these tunes impeccably engineered. This isn’t bad stuff at all; it just isn’t my speed.
— Friar Johnsen