The Haunted - Versus

Published September 16 2008

*=Staff's pick	Moronic Colossus* Pieces* Little Cage* Trenches Ceremony* Skuld Crusher Rivers Run Iron Mask Faultline Imperial Death March

Genre	Thrash/Death Metal	Peter Dolving	Vocals
Tracks	11	Anders Björler	Guitar
Runningtime	39 Min.	Patrik Jensen	Guitar
Label	Century Media	Jonas Björler	Bass
Release	17 September 2008	Per Möller Jensen	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	Soilwork, At The Gates

I was really pissed of with The Dead Eye. Why make another shitty metalcore, wannabe-In Flames record when you already are the mighty The Haunted? Perhaps they were looking too greedy across the Atlantic? Nevertheless, this should be about Versus now…

YES, they are back! That is the first impression when Moronic Colossus sounds from my speakers. It is hard, fast, classic, but yet modern thrash again. Second track Pieces could almost have been taken from One Kill Wonder. So far, so good. On Little Cage the building slowly starts to rumble. It is angry and brutal in the verse, but the chorus is turning too soft, in a metalcore way. Trenches passes by, not irritating, not that brutal. Ceremony has a cool riff and sounds promising at first, but lacks a bit of hard on to work all the way.

Skuld is probably the weirdest track ever by The Haunted. Musically slow and soft but yet dark and deep composition, partly in Swedish. Well, thumbs up for trying something, whatever it was. Crusher is a … crusher, without any impressions lasting though. With Rivers Run starts the total dip - a slow, suggestive and whiny track. Iron Mask continues in that vein. Faultline breaks a bit, with an again thrashier style, without really being aggressive or fast. Imperial Death March is a slow but heavy, almost doomy, closer, partly destroyed by some background sampling of a speech of some kind.

I still think that the golden age of The Haunted was the Marco Aro-era. Not necessarily because of the singer, but the overall brutal sound and the amounts of merciless 'hits' on …Made Me Do It and One Kill Wonder put them in top. But of course, the whining 'cleaner' vocals came with Dolving's return.

Though far better than its predecessor, Versus still does not impress me at large. To be fair, one should actually praise the variation and diversion, a bit of what is actually lacking on the above mentioned favourites. But overall there are still not enough tempo, explosive aggression and hooks. But it has its clearly promising moments, which give me some hope for the future.

See also review of: Exit Wounds , Unseen , The Dead Eye

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	6	7	5	5

Summary
5 chalices of 10 - David