The Haunted

There's room in metal for growth, progression and maturity, but it's always a gamble to incorporate these elements into a band's sound: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. The Haunted, in trying all of those things, have lost with this album. Lost like Cryptopsy. The band have experimented in the past, with mixed results, but this time they've gone full-on into melodic rock turf, with ugly results. While opener "Never Better" is more boring and cliché than anything else, songs like "No Ghost" evoke the worst of radio-ready grunge, right down to the vocals, and "Catch 22" and "Disappear" are nu-metal, plain and simple. But it's almost worse than when Machine Head do it: if Machine Head are Korn, the Haunted just end up as Coal Chamber (work with me here). Later in the album, songs like "Them" and "The City" are okay, kind of like a crappy version of the Haunted, but it's way too little, way too late. And then some songs kick in that sound like Slaughter in '96 trying to sound all dirty, heavy, emotional and gritty ― what the fuck ever happened to the Haunted, one of the best thrash/death bands of the modern era? We understand that the one dimension they worked in before was getting old for them, and that's fair enough, so they gambled. Roll the dice: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.