Review Summary: Alongside bands like The Crown, The Haunted launches massive amounts of anger and brutality but rEVOLVEr will eventually bore you.
At The Gates was one of Sweden's proudest death-metal bands, but unfortunately, the band broke up. Things were still shining bright, however, since three members decided to move on in another direction which they thought was necessary. In 1996 a new band was created known as
The Haunted, and instead of focusing on death-metal the former members took on a ferocious mix of aggressive thrash. Genres are indeed a good thing when it comes to describe a band or an artist but sometimes you might think that these sub-genres/hybrids and such just become too much and you can become confused most of the time.
The Haunted is unfortunately one band that has been classified in many different ways, and this has probably annoyed fans and other people who are related to the band. Metalcore and death-metal are some words that have been used to describe the band when I have been reading about them. However, I finally found a source that had some very accurate descriptions regarding the band. One source described
The Haunted as post-thrash and another source described them as an updated 80's thrash band with a 90's attitude. I think personally that this band belongs somewhere in the halls of thrash-metal, but I'm not saying that these guys sounds like
Metallica or
Hypnosia for example, as they are more similar to bands like, lets say,
Pantera. There are elements in
The Haunted's music that belongs to the thrash-metal genre: huge amounts of anger, aggression, ferocity and brutality are often present in the material alongside skilled musicianship.
rEVOLVEr is their fourth achievement but it is probably not one of their most successful albums, since they actually won two Grammy's in Sweden for being the best hard rock band and that was thanks to their album called
One Kill Wonder. Even if the band has been awarded doesn't have to mean that this band suits everyone.
rEVOLVEr still has a good number of highlights, plus lots of good stuff and bad stuff. Unfortunately the band puts out the best tracks right in the beginning, as
No Compromise is without a doubt the best song of this album, and most because of the overall variety in the entire song and the neck breaking vocal work from
Peter Dolving. Alongside
No Compromise we also find similar highlights such as
Sabotage and
Sweet Relief. We also have other highlights that has "softer'' thrash-based material, such as the heavy
99 and catchy
All Against All. The band might have some experienced metal musicians but the overall variety throughout the material is actually quite uninspired and not too impressive, as most song structures appear to be quite similar to each other. Songs like
Abysmal,
Burnt To A Shell and
My Shadow have pretty much the same tempos and two of them start off similar with acoustic intros and calm singing. Anger and brutality is present all the time in this album and that creates an atmosphere that feels a bit unique to the band, and with
Dolving's vocals, the atmosphere is incredibly flavoured with more aggression making the album a power load of heaviness, massive hatred and ferocity.
The Haunted is yet another band that doesn't add something new or groundbreaking when it comes to writing lyrics. You can easily figure out what this band is all about
: violence, hatred, personal issues, politics and society.
Peter Dolving is the current singer in this band. He was replaced earlier by another singer named
Marco Aro but eventually he left and
Peter Dolving was back in business.
Peter Dolving might not be your favourite singer but he can really deliver immense and aggressive vocal work, or screams if you want to call it. But he tends to push his luck a bit too much in some of the songs though which we will come back to later.
Patrick Jensen and
Anders Bjorler are the two guitarists in this band, and even if they come from well-known metal bands they still don't deliver a smashing guitar performance, as the guitar tone feels a bit too crispy or crunchy and the overall guitar work feels a bit poor. But they can put out some heavy and shredding riffs here and there which are also sometimes are a bit catchy. A good deal of the riffs seem like they were engineered to work alongside the mid-paced drumming and this creates sometimes a one-dimensional performance. Most guitar solos are pretty much above-average at least, as some of the solos are more technical than the others while others have a more melodic feel to them. Good job, but nothing revolutionary.
Jonas Bjorler is the bassist here, and if it wasn't for his bass then this band would've sounded a good deal worse. The bass really backs up the guitars and creates a solid and nice sounding wall of sound, and while
Jonas does not deliver any solos, fills or stuff like that, he remains in the rhythm sections. And what do we have here,
Per M. Jensen! A man that has been playing drums in many different metal bands, he delivers a varied and heavy drum performance, and many drum parts are often mid-paced ones but you can still notice some heavier and rhythmic metal beats and rattling double-bass kicking patterns.
A very heavy and angry album indeed but it still has some critical errors that are worth to bring forth. First of all we start with the good stuff, a huge plus to
Peter Dolving to start with. An incredible singer (screamer), his vocal range is still questionable but he definitely adds a lot to the aggressive and violent atmosphere the surrounds the material. The variety among the songs is good though, because if all the songs would've sounded identical then you could consider this as an uninspired and boring album. But then again, you have three different types of song structures in this album. Songs that can reflect that fact would be
No Compromise,
All Against All and
Abysmal. First you have a non-stop aggression assault, later you have a heavier, easy-digested and catchy song and last you have a creepier and slower song. The sound quality is very good, since the guitars are loud and crunchy, the bass makes a cranky and metallic back-up sound and the drums are loud enough so it doesn't interfere with the rest of the instruments.
That was some of the good stuff but now comes some bad stuff, and we focus once again on the vocals.
Peter has a powerful voice but people who are not used to these type of vocals will get bored very quickly, mainly due to the lack of variety in his vocal range..
Peter also tends to push his voice too much in some songs, such as
Burnt To A Shell,
Nothing Right and
Liquid Burns. He really screams so loud that it just gets annoying and you might skip the song to listen to something less intense. A second bad thing is the whole album, and what I mean is there are a hefty amount of songs and the variety is good but some of them tend to have flat and uninspired structures, because the drums and guitars seem to repeat the same riffs from other songs and this will make you bored if you happen to have or had high hopes about this album.
People might've had high hopes about this band and their albums when they appeared for the first time,
rEVOLOVEr might not be their biggest album, it is definitely worth a listening. I will still remind you that this band does not suit just any metal head. It doesn't matter if you are deep into metal or having thoughts of making an adventure in the realms of metal, and
The Haunted is a very aggressive, intense and hard-hitting metal band and if you want to listen to this album then you better be prepared for the worst. Some people will see this album as a good one but for those who are new to the band might or will see especially this album as very one-dimensional. Fans of the band should to check this album out but people outside the fan base might want to approach this album and band with caution because it will take time before you can get into
The Haunted's aggressive and brutal music.
Positive
+ Peter Dolving can literally beat the **** out of a person with his vocals/screams
+ This heavy album reeks of anger, brutality and rage
+ Great sound quality
+ Decent variety among the songs
Negative
- The album itself might be a bit one-dimensional due to the lack of overall variation
- The vocals can really get one your nerves if you are unlucky
- Quite uninspired material, nothing groundbreaking
- Bad album cover
Recommended Tracks
-- No Compromise
-- All Against All
-- 99
An underrated album but it needs time to sink in, this album will receive a 3.5/5
