Review Summary: The Haunted has taken another direction in their latest album The Dead Eye. This album is a bit darker and slower instead of being extreme and fast.
One time when I was watching TV I noticed that it was the Swedish Grammy award show, I quickly checked in the newspaper if there were any nominees for the best hard rock/heavy metal band. I guess anyone could figure that out, since Sweden almost only has extreme metal bands the chance of seeing one such band (a huge band) during a show like this is very slim.
The Haunted and
In Flames were of course some of the nominees, other bands was the flat power/heavy metal band
Hammer Fall, an old rock band called
Europe (anyone would recognize ‘’It’s The Final Countdown’’ by now) and another band that does not deserves to be called hard rock. Anyway, I was hoping that
The Haunted would be awarded but
In Flames became the best hard rock band of the year and snatched the award which became their third (congratulations). I can understand that the flame boys won and the haunting guys didn’t,
The Haunted has managed to get their feet into the world of metal but they seem to be stuck in a place of their own. Most metal heads knows that
The Haunted was created by members from legendary
At The Gates, their music is very aggressive, quite straight forward and a bit psychotic if you ask me. A fairly unique band but they really have to develop if they want to strike big with all the competition that exists today (which is pretty much immense by now).
I have only experienced
rEVOLVEr from this band and their newest album called
The Dead Eye. First of all,
rEVOLVEr was like a huge pressure cooker which was totally out of control. Large amounts of boiling hatred, anger and brutality attacked the listener continuously, a good thing might some of you think but that album was pretty much locked in its sound, few standouts and the overall variety was pretty much the same and the album got boring and sometimes quite repetitive. But enough of
rEVOLVEr lets focus on
The Dead Eye instead. In 2006
The Haunted released a new album, I have to admit that I was quite surprised when I started to listen to it, this time the band seemed to have been working more on the songs (except the track titles since everyone starts with a ‘’the’’). Unfortunately this album does not deliver anything particularly new or groundbreaking, but this album brings good news though.
The Dead Eye displays a new direction in their music, I say the same thing I read in a newspaper once regarding
The Haunted’s new album:
The Haunted dares to be darker this time. I agree with those words,
The Dead Eye is a dark album since everything is not performed with outrages energy which the band tends to do some times. Although this is still an aggressive and energetic metal album but the thing is that the band has used more melodies this time and it gives the album an interesting sound. Melodic death metal, aggressive thrash metal and a few splashes of metalcore do create a good and varied sound.
The Premonition introduces you to the album as a short instrumental and melodic intro which is based on dark and simplistic melodic riffs.
The Flood starts off as a half-thrashy heavy metal track with catchy and heavy guitar work. Simplistic but yet heavy drumming are present and it makes the song quite enjoyable, still not a standout track.
The Medication starts off with a brutal mid-paced thrash intro alongside
Peter Dolvings vocal rage. You can definitely headbang a bit to this song since the structure has a good variation, thrash elements shifts with melodic tunes. Here you also have some heavy slide-riffs that you can headbang to if you prefer slower tempos, one standout track here.
The Drowning begins with a quick intro, bass and
Dolving’s freaky singing continues while more instruments joins up. A really good and catchy song which also has a short section with melodic bass and guitars, it creates a good break in all this madness, also a small standout track.
Dolving’s borderline singing is good also, sharp screams, loud yells and calm singing creates a good vocal performance.
The Reflection takes on a very calm but creepy electro acoustic intro with some depressive singing. After a while the rest joins up and the song gets slow and heavy, then it returns to its depressive state. This pattern repeats until the song ends, quite boring song. Hardly any catchy moments and the droning song pattern is so uninspired.
The Prosecution has a thrash based formula most because of the mid-paced drumming and fast shredding guitars.
Dolving still goes berserk with his screams but he gets calmer at some occasions during the song. It still isn’t a standout because of an un-catchy song pattern and recycled guitar work.
The Fallout enters with a melodic guitar and drum intro, it is later ending to give space for more calm acoustics and
Dolvings melancholy singing. More instruments enter and the song gets more serious since the vocals turns into half-dark screams. This time the song is good even if the tempo is slow and heavy, perhaps not a standout but it is still a good track.
The Medusa is without a doubt the most horrible song. Most guitar riffs seems so uninspired and
Dolving’s vocal structure just doesn’t cut it. A very uninteresting track that brings nothing new, well, the guitar solo get some credit though, skip this because there are better things ahead.
The Shifter is one of the best tracks here. Interesting and varied in every aspect, guitars and drums have more technique and they are very catchy too. Good vocals since there are both screams and evil and darker vocals also, awesome track because of the overall variety basically.
The Cynic begins with a strange melodic intro, more bass and depressive vocals once again gives the song a small repetitive warning. Gloomy or doomy would be my words to describe this track, nothing new but it still separates itself from the rest of the tracks.
The Failure follows the same path, a slow tempo and song structure reminds you of the previous tracks.
Dolving’s vocals still has a direction towards singing rather than screaming which can be a small relief for the listener. Other than that the songs still has few catchy moments, boring melodies and a quite heavy sound.
The Stain has finally arrived, this is the best track in my opinion. A quite straight forward track but this track reeks of heavy thrash, mid-paced and other drum patterns creates variety. Catchy and very heavy shredds plus a great solo gives the track more flavour. The only bad thing that occurs is another of these calm section with acoustics, other than that this track really rocks.
The Guilt Trip is ten minutes long and therefore the end track. A slight melodic intro is played and later
Metallica inspired riffs are played. Even this track sums up pretty much of what has already been played, only the riffs and a long gap of in the song gives it variety. It has an ending part based on sad and depressive singing and melodic piano notes are played, great way to end an album but that long minute gap in the song is unnecessary.
Hope this didn’t bored you too much but I wanted to go back to one of my old review formats to see if they would still hold up. I wanted to give you readers a bit more information about the tracks so you don’t have to get this album and then find it as a boring album, this band seems to be flamed from every possible direction and I think that’s because people had too high expectations about this band. Anyway, I will soon finish this review but I will first tell you what was good and bad about this album. Some good things were of course the new direction of the entire sound, it had more melodies, vocals had better varied and the album had a limited anger supply and a better atmosphere. This album actually doesn’t remind you
that much of previous albums, this has some uniqueness in it but unfortunately it has some flaws. Even here the songs tends to follow each others steps which makes this to a fairly boring and repetitive album, it still has some great songs such as
The Shifter,
The Medication,
The Drowning and some parts of
The Guilt Trip. I think that this album could be a quite good start for those who want to get into the band since this album is quite easy to endure. Other metal people could also check this out but if you already had some bad experiences from
The Haunted’s music then you might let this album alone.
Reviewer’s ranking list
-- The Stain 5/5
-- The Shifter 5/5
-- The Medication 4.5/5
-- The Drowning 4/5
-- The Flood 4/5
-- The Guilt Trip 3.5/5
-- The Reflection 3/5
-- The Fallout 3/5
-- The Cynic 2.5/5
-- The Failure 2/5
-- The Premonition 2/5
-- The Medusa 1.5/5
This album will be given a 3.5/5 (great)
