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Reviews
The Haunted: Unseen
29/04/11 || revenant
Ahh, The Haunted. One of my favourite bands of all time, makers of some of the finest thrash ever heard by mankind and now, with the release of their seventh album “Unseen”, are victims of some of the most unjust criticism ever seen. I know we’re not the first site on the net to review this, and that’s mainly due to the fact that the biggest The Haunted fan here (being me) happens to live in the country that is the last place in the world the album was released. By two fucken weeks. Be happy I waited and didn’t resort to piracy guys.
Anyway, that being the case, here’s a quick summery of the unjustness I was referring to above, which happens to be 90% of the reviews on the web. I can summarize all these reviews as follows:
“Waaah waaah, The Haunted aren’t playing thrash any more. Waaah waaah, I won’t give this album any chance, write a whiney review and give it a low score. Waaaaaah”.
One fucktard even referred to this album as “The Haunted’s St Anger”.
I would like to declare, right now, that all of these individuals are utter fucking morons. Retarded keyboard warriors of the Idiotnet listen up: The Haunted don’t owe you anything. They don’t have to play the music you want them to play. They are individuals who are making the kind of music they want to play. If you don’t like it, deal with it. Don’t listen to it once, brand it shit and write some stupid whiney article about it.
Yes The Haunted’s sound has changed significantly since they were thrash giants. I miss those days too. But let’s not slam “Unseen” for being a far cry from their first album and take it for what it is.
The sound for the new album is a much slower and groove driven one. The vocals are much cleaner and the choruses much catchier than before. Does this make it bad? Hell fucken no. The Haunted are quality song writers, they still retail all facilities to write great riffs and well arranged music. Anyone with half an ear for music can hear that despite the changed delivery, there is still and undeniable quality to The Haunted’s output.
But while I stand strong in defense of this work, the second coming of Christ this is not. There is indeed some great music here (check out “No ghost”, “Disappear” or “Unseen” and try to wipe those fuckers from your mind), but at the same time there are others that pass by without really making an impression. The first half of the album contains the better half of the music and if reviewed in isolation, would probably earn an 8. The second half containers the weaker tracks and, aside from “All ends well”, really doesn’t have any massively catchy numbers.
I mentioned briefly above the vocals are much cleaner. Now I know I have been a critic of Dolving in the past, mostly due to the over use of the screamo style. The screamo vocals are all but gone on “Unseen” and there is nothing extreme in his performance. It’s mostly melody and it has to be said: I really like his performance here. His voice does have something, whether it’s his menacing drawls or his melodic singing, and it compliments the new sound well. The only gripe I have is the layered vocals on “No Ghost”, where two vocal tracks are laid on top of one another. I hate that kind of shit and it creates an annoying echo-like affect.
Overall, I have to say I enjoyed this album a lot more than I was expecting. Some of the tracks are real growers that burrow deep into your conscious and are impossible not to sing or hum. The new sound works well, but only because these guys are so good at what they do. It’s far from a perfect album, but it’s an improvement on “Versus” and not the shitpile some other web reviews will have you believe. Fuck the haters.
- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Century Media Records
- Website: www.the-haunted.com
- Band
- Peter Dolving: vocals
- Patrik Jensen: guitars
- Anders Björler: guitars
- Jonas Björler: bass
- Per M. Jensen: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Never Better
- 02. No Ghost
- 03. Catch 22
- 04. Disappear
- 05. Motionless
- 06. Unseen
- 07. The Skull
- 08. Ocean Park
- 09. The City
- 10. Them
- 11. All Ends Well
- 12. Done
