The Haunted, the band who single-handedly revived the sleeping Thrash Metal scene in the late 1990-ies with their debut album. A string of line up changes followed. For the recording of ‘Revolver’ the band used the services again from their original singer, Peter Dolving. I regard ‘One Kill Wonder’ as their high-water mark and I am curious whether they manage to surpass that with their new album.
Things have changed musically as well. As a whole ‘Revolver’ is a slower album than its predecessor. The vocals are more prominent than ever before. Peter Dolving is a way more versatile singer than Marco Aro, so it is more than logical the band makes use of this. The emphasis is more on the vocals and creating a certain atmosphere and less on thundering drums and fast riffing in tracks like ‘Abysmal’ and ‘Burnt To A Shell’. I think it is too bad, because it takes a lot of attitude and aggression away from the music. The whole album is suffering from a lack of real aggression which made the previous release so appealing to me. This album has some fast paced songs like ‘No Compromise’, ‘Sabotage’ and ‘Who Will Decide’, but they are missing the sheer ferocity of songs like ‘Godpuppet’ and ‘One Kill Wonder’. Is ‘Revolver’ such a bad album? No, on the contrary. The Haunted know how to write a decent song or two, Peter Dolving is a capable and versatile vocalist, the album offers enough variation and there is simply nothing to bitch about the production. Usually I don’t say much about the artwork, but this time I want to make an exception. It is simply terrible.
I can not help feeling a little disappointed about ‘Revolver’. It simply lacks the aggression and attitude of their previous effort, ‘One Kill Wonder’. ‘Revolver’ is not a bad record by all means. It has its fair share of decent songs, enough variation and the production is excellent as well. As for me I think I am going to give the new Impious, entitled ‘Hellucinate’, a couple of spins, grab myself a nice cold beer and start hoping for better days when The Haunted are going to record the follow up for ‘Revolver’…
