The Haunted - rEVOLVEr
This latest release by The Haunted starts off promising with the scorching "No Compromise" coming hard out of the gates, but quickly falters as they fail to capitalize on this momentum. Instead you find the few good songs sandwiched between a slew of slower, indistinct hard rock songs that share more with new Metallica than the excellent neo-thrash The Haunted are known for.
While this isn't the first time The Haunted have slowed things down, most notably on the "Made Me Do It" album, they fail to infuse these slower songs with any of the memorable riffing that made the songs on "Made Me Do It" enjoyable. Instead we get a lot of somewhat bland conventional hard rock songs that would fit better on a cheesy action flick soundtrack than the follow up record to one of the better metal albums of the last few years. Even some of the stronger songs are plagued with the least imaginative riffing this band has ever done. The musicianship is top notch like usual but nothing really grabs you. When you weed all this filler out what you're left with is really about an EP worth of quality songs but even those suffer from some inconsistent songwriting.
The songwriting isn't the only they changed as the original vocalist is back in the fold. For me this is another ding as this guy sounds more like a hardcore singer than the ultra metal replacement guy they've used on the last two albums. He also does a lot of clean vocals which helps push a lot of this material into the non-metal realm. Still, I'm not sure even the old vocalist could have saved some of the clunkers found here.
Needless to say this is a pretty big disappointment as it seemed like, judging from their last record, this band was destined to be one of the great metal bands of this decade. Instead we get a marginal record with only a few good songs and a huge question mark as to whether these guys will pull it together on future releases to reclaim the high ground they lost with this sub par effort.
While this isn't the first time The Haunted have slowed things down, most notably on the "Made Me Do It" album, they fail to infuse these slower songs with any of the memorable riffing that made the songs on "Made Me Do It" enjoyable. Instead we get a lot of somewhat bland conventional hard rock songs that would fit better on a cheesy action flick soundtrack than the follow up record to one of the better metal albums of the last few years. Even some of the stronger songs are plagued with the least imaginative riffing this band has ever done. The musicianship is top notch like usual but nothing really grabs you. When you weed all this filler out what you're left with is really about an EP worth of quality songs but even those suffer from some inconsistent songwriting.
The songwriting isn't the only they changed as the original vocalist is back in the fold. For me this is another ding as this guy sounds more like a hardcore singer than the ultra metal replacement guy they've used on the last two albums. He also does a lot of clean vocals which helps push a lot of this material into the non-metal realm. Still, I'm not sure even the old vocalist could have saved some of the clunkers found here.
Needless to say this is a pretty big disappointment as it seemed like, judging from their last record, this band was destined to be one of the great metal bands of this decade. Instead we get a marginal record with only a few good songs and a huge question mark as to whether these guys will pull it together on future releases to reclaim the high ground they lost with this sub par effort.
