THE HAUNTED: Versus

Produced by Tue Madsen and The Haunted

Released: September 22


It's frustrating being a fan of The Haunted because you just don't know if what they release is going to blow you away or leave you wanting to blow them away. The first album was rather good, the second OK and the third was rubbish. Then on rEVOLVEr they came storming back with one of 2004's best before throwing everyone a curve-ball with The Dead Eye, a kind of sludgy, semi-concept off-the-wall piece that was nothing like anything they'd done before and successfully polarised their audience into those who thought it was a masterpiece (like me) and those who detested it with all their being (plenty of others). Album number six is probably going to do the same.

In a nutshell, while Versus is being promoted as a return to basics, it is essentially a combination of the groove-laden melodic thrash of earlier times and the more experimental parts of The Dead Eye with metalcore thrown in. "Moronic Colossus" is a thunderous metal assault as album opener, with a sharp guitar sound and Peter Dolving's hardcore-style bark ripping out of the speakers. This is The Haunted at their metallic best, firing on all cylinders and fuelled by a enormous pounding groove. With Tue Madsen at the controls, the mix is heavy with razor-like guitar, but all the elements are in tight harmony. "Pieces" and "Little Cage" continue the onslaught. The appropriately-titled "Crusher" is nothing but a true ball of face-ripping fury played at blinding speed, perfectly placed after the creeping interlude of "Skuld", reminiscent of the darkest moments from The Dead Eye. "Ceremony" injects an element of metalcore into proceedings, a move that may not necessarily be wholly embraced by some but coming from a band with members of At The Gates -- to whom metalcore owes so much -- it's perhaps not just forgivable but completely appropriate.

Towards the tail end of the album are a couple of tracks that vary the diet. "Rivers Run" is like some kind of blending of sludge rock and thrash, underpinned by a sinister throbbing bass line, and "Iron Mask" is another song that could have been at home on the previous album. "Imperial Death March" rounds things out nicely with a fat, mid-paced, apocalyptic chopping riff and Dolving screaming his heart out.

This is a very good album from The Haunted, showing them once again to be far more than just another modern thrash band.

1. Moronic Colossus
2. Pieces
3. Little Cage
4. Trenches
5. Ceremony
6. Skuld
7. Crusher
8. Rivers Run
9. Iron Mask
10. Faultline
11. Imperial Death March

Rating: 90%

THE HAUNTED: rEVOLVEr

Produced by Frederik Nordström, Patrik J Sten and The Haunted
Released: 2004

A lot was riding on The Haunted's fourth album. The previous release, One Kill Wonder, was a polarising one in that critics seemed to love it but fans’ opinions seem to suggest that it was everything from below par to just plain sucky. Marco Aro’s lifeless vocal performance is often considered to be to blame for this but in reality there’s only so many times you can record the same song on the one album before it sounds like you’re repeating the same ideas over and over again and it was hard to believe that the geniuses behind bands like At the Gates and Witchery could have thought that an album like One Kill Wonder was actually worthy of release.

The Haunted have emphasised the ‘evolve’ part of this album’s title possibly to acknowledge the fact that evolving is what they had to do to stay relevant. Part of this process was to switch labels to Century Media, who gave this release a groovy cardboard slipcase and plenty of support. Another was to get in the studio with the proven wizard pairing of Frederick Nordström and Patrik Sten. There was also the very smart move of bringing back original vocalist Peter Dolving, whose range and abilities provide many a highlight here. Yet another part was to show that they don’t need to play at breakneck speed the whole time to make a solid and solidly enjoyable thrash metal album. That’s not to say that this is a slow album by any means, as blitzkriegs like ‘Who Will Decide’, ‘Liquid Burns’ and ‘Sweet Relief’ prove beyond doubt, but it is considerably more diverse than previous efforts. ‘All Against All’ shows a decidedly more melodic side and ‘Burnt to a Shell’ and ‘Abysmal’ are slower paced but lack none of The Haunted’s typical menace.

rEVOLVEr is a monster, precisely the album this band needed to make to atone for the sin of the album before and one that probably saved them from disintegration.

1. No Compromise
2. 99
3. Abysmal
4. Sabotage
5. All Against All
6. Sweet Relief
7. Burnt to a Shell
8. Who Will Decide
9. Nothing Right
10. Liquid Burns
11. My Shadow

Rating: 85%

THE HAUNTED: The Dead Eye

Produced by Tue Madsen and The Haunted

Released: 2006

When this fifh album by The Haunted first lobbed there was a lot of conflicting opinion and almost immediately, when the band slowed down during "The Flood" and Peter Dolving started crooning like Eddie Vedder, I knew why The Dead Eye had polarised opinion. On the one hand, this is a remarkable album so different from anything The Haunted had ever done that the band should be applauded for even attempting it. On the flipside, it's so different from anything they'd done before that you're left wondering what the hell they were thinking. Had this been their first album it could well have been a different story, but The Dead Eye is The Haunted's fifth. After four albums, a band's fanbase can reasonably expect any album that follows to be reasonably similar to the ones before. After all, that's usually why people like a particular artist in the first place. Throwing out a curve ball can be a career-damaging move.

Throughout The Dead Eye, Peter Dolving wears a variety of vocal guises and more than once proves himself to be a fairly noteworthy mimic. There's the aforementioned Vedder reference, a hint of Aaron Stainthorpe in "The Fallout" and in the eerie coda of "The Guilt Trip" even an allusion to Thom Yorke. This is assuredly the most noticeable aspect of the album and it certainly feels as if this is very much Dolving's record, with the song structures deliberately determined by his varying voices, be it a rasping scream, a mellow croon or a frantic whisper. Musically there's a clear emphasis on riffing over soloing, something that many would undoubtedly suggest puts this into the dreaded realm of metalcore, but The Dead Eye is simply too diverse and interesting for that. Past albums have shown that this band is more than able to do the standard Swedish melodic death/thrash thing rather well; The Dead Eye shows that they can also do other things.

This is still very much a metal record, and was perhaps one of the best metal releases of 2006, but its unexpected direction and progressive and experimental nature caused a lot of people who just wanted The Haunted to stay as they were to accuse them of all kinds of things from selling-out to band-wagon jumping. Like all bands that change horses midstream, The Haunted found themselves in the interesting quandary of having made an excellent album that much of their fanbase - rather unfairly - hated.

Whatever one thinks of it The Dead Eye removed any preconceptions about The Haunted, possibly for good.

1. The Premonition


2. The Flood


3. The Medication


4. The Drowning


5. The Reflection


6. The Prosecution


7. The Fallout


8. The Medusa


9. The Shifter


10. The Cynic


11. The Failure


12. The Stain


13. The Guilt Trip

Rating: 93%