Great Dane Records, 2016
Genre: Death Metal
1. In Belief, Into Nothingness...
2. Sadistic Deviance
3. Visceral Torments
4. Heiress of Disease
5. Ô Father...
6. Succubus Offering
7. The Unhealthy Signature: Haunted by Words of Gods Part II
8. Hérésie
9. Demons from the Past
10. Flesh Messiah
11. Blasphemous Writings (Final Part)
I sort of lost track of Hysteria over the years and I had no idea the project was still active, sadly I was a couple years late picking up this album. I don't know what made me check up on them, but I was pleasantly surprised a new album was out. I think they got lost in the shuffle over the years, because the last album did come out quite a long time ago. Sadly this album has probably been overlooked by the scene as well.
"Flesh, Humilation and Irreligious Deviance" really picks up right where "When Believers Preach their Hangamn's Dogma" leaves off. It's almost hard to believe such a large spans of time has gone by between these two albums. Naturally, "Flesh, Humilation and Irreligious Deviance" does advance their sound quite a lot. It's just interesting to think about what catches the public eye, for example Hate has gotten quite popular, but Hysteria is every bit as good as that band. This is really the difference between a large scale touring act, but I still wish it was easier for bands like Hysteria to get their name out there because their music is truly awesome. I can tell already from the first listen that this album will be added to my "go to" list of Death Metal albums to listen to. It's interesting to see how much Hysteria has changed over the years and I feel like they've become even more influenced by the sounds of Polish Death Metal, but their addition of more Swedish styled melodies into the mix really can make their sound feel quite different from the usual Polish masters. One interesting thing I've noticed this time around is their inclusion of varying up the vocals a lot more. Prior to this they stayed mostly in the low guttural style with the occasional higher range scream. But this time they are starting to include some more flat out yelling styles that are really making for a great effect in the atmosphere of the songs. They really stand out quite a bit, because they are markedly different from the way a vocalist like Nergal approaches them.
In the end the new Hysteria is simply an awesome album. If you liked the last album, I can't imagine you would be disappointed with this release. I feel like Hysteria are finally settling down into their own sound and have found their own unique take on the genre after spending a couple albums trying to find their sound. Since this album and the last are a result of that exploration, I would say two mediocre releases were well worth the wait for something this exquisite. They've really managed to give a truly refined feel to their music that exemplifies their rather diverse approach to the writing of this music. An absolutely must listen as far as I'm concerned.
Trendkill Recordings, 2009
Genre: Death Metal
1. Sufferings Make Me Almighty
2. Your Kingdom Will Be Mine
3. Still Haunted by Flesh (Work or Torments Part II)
4. Art of Evil
5. The Unholy Creation
6. Lies for Religion Supremacy
7. Stroke Down by Disease
8. Blinded by Religious Doctrines
9. Les écrites blasphématoires
Hysteria isn't the type of band to crank out albums, but it seems they're content to wait until the time is right and they have material worth showing off, which is something I can totally respect. Once again I picked this album up when it was originally released. We finally have some fairly unique cover art and a really awesome booklet layout to match making this album totally worth buying. The biggest reason this is worth getting is the sheer and immense improvement over the past two efforts.
It's hard to believe this band ever sounded like "Abyssal Plains of Chaos", because "When Believers Preach their Hangman's Dogma" is such a stellar presentation of refined and well thought out modern Death Metal. It's almost a shame how overlooked this band is given how exceptional good the riffing is on this album. Not one bad song, mind you. I'm doing this review in 2018 and I've had this album in a fair amount of rotation when I'm in the mood for some excellently well written Death Metal. The truly best part of this release is that it's more than just a mere exercise in Death Metal performance, the riffs have some wonderful atmosphere behind them, while maintaining that crushing Brutal Death Metal vibe. Look at how "Stroke Down by Disease" starts? Awesome atmosphere right there before it takes off into really intense Death Metal. Hysteria haven't lost their melodic touch either because the main riff on "Still Haunted by Flesh" feels extremely influenced by the Black Metal band Dawn. However, melody has taken a back seat in favor of more brutal riffing for the majority of the album. It sounds like they are becoming more influenced by the heavy hitters out in Poland like Trauma, but they still blend in this interesting mix of Hypocrisy and Morbid Angel for good measure.
"When Believers Preach their Hangman's Dogma" is an absolutely superb album and sadly overlooked by the metal community. I think this is a rare gem in a world of mundane efforts. Maybe I'm getting more out of this material than others? But I really enjoyed everything they put together on here a lot. If you enjoy exceptional riffing that is more than just chugging and crushing tone, but a really excellent blend then this is a must listen. They may not be doing anything drastically new, but their particular blend of influences is unique enough to keep me coming back to this album.
Adipocere Records, 2006
Genre: Death Metal
1. Haunted by Words of Gods
2. Controlled Existence
3. Martyrs of God
4. My Last Thoughts
5. The Valley of Hinnom
6. From Beyond Reality
7. Unfathomable Mystery
8. Work of Torments
I remember being surprised when this album hit, because I thought this project was done with just the one EP. I remember liking the EP back then enough to see what the new album would sound like. It was hard to sample music back in 2006 as if it wasn't really on myspace there weren't really many options, but I really liked the album title a lot. The cover was kind of weird though and a lot of other bands were doing very similar graphic design like Sinister, Hate, and Behemoth even. The layout and design of the booklet is pretty cool, but I just remember thinking it was already overdone by the time I got my hands on this release. It's like the genre of Death Metal suddenly hired the same graphic designer.
Musically "Haunted by Words of Gods" is way better than their EP. It feels like the band has managed to find more of a direction and got much better at blending together their brutal riffing with the more melodic passages. They do a very good job of hitting that brutal Death Metal sequence and the album pretty much hits you with this after the Exorcist sample laden intro. So, right from the start this album hits you pretty hard. The riffing is solid and reminiscent of a Suffocation meets Morbid Angel sort of blend. There's probably a decent amount of Deicide in here too, but not total worship like we hear with a band like Hate. Hysteria switches between the Brutal Death Metal style and a Melodic Death Metal style. Sure there are moments that are melodic and reminiscent of works like At the Gates, but a lot of the parts have more of Hypocrisy atmosphere to them, which is really wonderful as a lot of bands don't do the newer Hyprocrisy style well.
Production wise this blows the prior album out of the water. Everything is so much more powerful and I feel like I'm listening to real drum set! Albeit it's triggered, but better than a terrible e-kit snare sound. It seems like they put a lot more care into this album and the skill behind the riff writing is far more apparent.
In the end this is an enjoyable album. I liked it quite a bit when I first got it in 2006, but it has fallen out of rotation. Listening again after all these years, I'm not sure it holds up to the test of time for me. It's not a bad album to have on and some of the riffs are really killer riffs, but as a whole I have other releases that I find to be a lot better. Hysteria is taken steps in the right direction though, so with this release I looked forward to their next album a lot more.
Infernal Waves Productions, 2002
Genre: Death Metal
1. Taking Sides with the Devil... the Ritual
2. Endless Suffering
3. Spiritual Weakness
4. Vision of Chaos - Disruption of the Elements
I picked up Hysteria's debut release when it first came out and I've been following the project ever since. It's been easily a decade since I've listened to this EP and let's see if this holds up in 2018. Hysteria is a project that no one really talked about and I think I remember buying this as a random purchase on a label because I thought the cover looked cool. Even though this is likely long out of print, it's still pretty readily available on the internet at various locations.
The early 2000's were a weird production time for extreme metal, suddenly we had access to more affordable digital gear. We no longer had to rely on tape in the home studio and we didn't have to pay for fancy more analog driven studios. You could put an album together and it wouldn't sound like the early 90's harsh demos of the days of yore. However, there were some growing pains with the new technology... especially in the drum trigger market. Triggers sounded atrocious around this time, they've definitely gotten better over the years (nothing beats a real drumset in my opinion though). This Hysteria album sounds like it was recorded with an electronic kit on the drums and as a result it has some of the worst snare tone out there. The performance is great and a lot of early band recordings wound up on the cheap this way. Saves mixing time too, ah well... the guitars sound pretty good... the production was just something that stood out as I turned this one.
Anyway, musically this album is kind of all over the place. Maybe that's the real source of the band name in some respects. This four song EP ranges from the realms of more Brutal Death Metal to really nice Melodic Death Metal. It kind of circles around these ideas with split second switches at times, but other times the riffing will transform itself more seamlessly. Perhaps they're drawing some influence from the likes of Akercocke and blending it in with the Melodic Death Metal style we hear out of Sweden. There are even moments when they play Thrashier riffs that wind up having a bit more a Black Metal vibe, but this isn't very often.
In the end this is an okay start for a band. I would like to see them organize their musical ideas better on future releases. I can see why this release has wound up as dead stock in some distros, it's not terrible, but it's only okay. It will clearly get buried by the deluge of more solidified projects releasing higher quality material. Unless you're a really big Hysteria fan this is probably worth skipping.
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