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For those of you who are not familiar with the Haunted, they are the incarnation of the former melodic death metal act At the Gates (who, by the way, were an extremely kick ass little band). The Haunted features the brothers Anders and Jonas Bjorler playing guitar and bass, respectively, and they do a mighty fine job of playing their instruments. Also on board is Witchery guitarist Patrick Jensen and Artillery drummer Per Moller Jensen, and Mark Aro from Face Down handling the growls(or screams or whatever the bloody hell you wanna call them, because it sure as hell aint singin'). The musicianship is quite good, and is tighter than hell. Aro does a competent job on vocals, but he is hardly discernible, and more likely than not your gonna need a lyric sheet. The guitar riffs are heavy as fuck, as Anders shows us he can shred as good as he ever did back with ATG. The solos are solid, pretty good coming from a thrash band(a genre not known for very impressive solos, well that might be an ignorant statement but oh well, kiss my ass). The question people ask are the Haunted as good or better than At the Gates? The answer is no. The songwriting, melodies, vocals, solos, everything is simply one step below the achievements of the Bjorlers' former band, but it does not soil the fact that this is still a pretty fine band, and they deserve listenin' to.

All of the tracks are pretty solid, but all are too short and uninteresting for my tastes. They basically repeat a pattern of verse, bridge, verse, bridge, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, solo, bridge, chorus. And more often than not the song clocks in at under three minutes, and the total run-time of this baby leaves room to be desired. Maybe they were shootin' for the Reign in Blood run time, but who knows? The highlights of the disc are "D.O.A" with its crunchy riff and "Urban Predator" with its killer guitar work in the chorus. The rest of the tracks don't stand out much, its sort of a sloppy, thrown together mix of hardcore songs. Its new age thrash meets metalcore, or so some have called it. Some hate it, some dig it. I happen to be somewhere in the middle, because I can get into every song if I try, but somehow it never happens to find its way into my player. An off-shoot of sorts of At the Gates, this album will definitely please fans of the At the Gates as well as fans of melodic death/thrash metal in general, but it does not come highly recommended by me.