Friday, February 3rd, 2012 at 1:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
The Haunted’s rEVOLVEr came out in October of 2004, and the band has released two more albums since then. So, of course, it makes perfect sense that they just released a video for the rEVOLVEr track, “99.”
And while some fans are suggesting that the band did this to remind all the haters of their mostly-loathed Unseen* about happier times, I have been assured by no less an authority than W. Axl Rose that this is not the case. “Waiting seven years to release a video makes perfect sense!” Rose assured me. When I asked him to elaborate, he mumbled something about Lars Ulrich and lack of support from the record label and ran away crying.
rEVOLVEr has been out on Century Media more than two years longer than there’s been a MetalSucks.
If I saw this crazy-looking dude running through the streets with headphones on, dancing and making weird faces, I’d probably call the cops. Or at least the insane asylum. But relax! It’s just the lovable, huggable Haunted frontman Peter Dolving having fun at the expense of the unsuspecting Japanese public. Because Japanese people are intrinsically funny!
The video is for the song “Seasick” by Dolving’s side-project Rosvo. Says Dolving, “We shot this video in 45 minutes. Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Anders Björler and Peter Dolving, one iPhone and a bunch of people on their way somewhere wondering what the hell the guy wit the beard was going on about. Anders edited it in a couple of hours when we got home and here we have it.”
Anders Björler for music video director of the year?
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011 at 12:00pm by Anso DF
Y’know, whatever the problem is between The Haunted singer Peter Dolving and Watain, I’m gonna go with Watain. I don’t know what set him off, but Dolving said Watain is overrated (read here). Okay fine, dude’s got his opinion. He also seems to think Watain is corny and totally scoffs at their vibe. I get that, too. But I don’t think it’s cool to kinda float it out there that maybe somebody somewhere should fight the dudes of Watain. And good guys, guys that we like, don’t all slyly suggest that other guys are neo-nazis. I mean, as I read Dolving’s words, I half-expected the Leezar to claim that they have STDs.
Plus I thrash the logic that Watain would best harness their evil potential by becoming white-collar business jerks, with all the schooling and networking that suggests. First off, why is he so sure they aren’t working on a weather machine or subliminal Manchurian Candidate stuff? Second, Dolving’s logic is half-baked, right? I mean, why doesn’t Dolving become a high-powered executive to wield his agenda on everybody? Oh right, cuz he’s a musician. Musicians make music.
-ADF
Watain’s awesome 2010 album Lawless Darkness yielded the awesome “Reaping Death” single whose b-side is an awesome Bathory cover (above!).
Just the other day I was thinking to myself, “Gee, what ever happened to Peter Dolving’s MySpace blogs? Obviously MySpace isn’t a thing anymore, but I can’t imagine that means Dolving has any less to say.” I always enjoyed reading The Haunted frontman’s rants; they were funny, honest, well-articulated, and best of all got the entirety of the metal Interhole in a fucking rage. Well, today I have my answer to my question; he’s baaaaack! On Facebook, natch. And the beef is most certainly still simmering on the open fire.
The latest Dolving controversy involves Watain, specifically that he isn’t too fond of his fellow Swedes. Here’s the FB status update that got it all going:
So, um Waitan from Schmockholm… They’re a an overrated band, and probably need their asses kicked, you know like generally speaking. Agree? Disagree?
And things pretty much exploded from there! A follow-up comment after several readers responded:
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 12:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
It seems like the only people who actually dug The Haunted’s most recent album, Unseen, are me, Vince, and the members of the band themselves. And that’s a bummer, ’cause while Unseen may not have been the group’s heaviest effort, it still rocks, and the songs are incredibly catchy.
The catchiest — and my favorite on the record — is “No Ghost,” which now has a live video, filmed at the most recent edition of Wacken.It’s not necessarily the best live video I’ve ever seen, but the band sounds great, and if it gets X number of new people into the song, then it will have done its job.
Here at MS we like to use the Reviews section to highlight smaller bands that we don’t otherwise talk about much throughout the regular course of our blogging. Said “regular course of our blogging” includes tons of articles about bigger bands’ albums, usually before release: song premieres (here or elsewhere), music videos, in-studio vids, album artwork, and so on and so forth. But when those albums do finally come out, well, a lot of the time they kind of fall off our radar. So what of those albums that we spend lots of time hyping? Full-on reviews are a royal pain in the ass to write, so today I’ll take a quick look at a few releases from the first half of 2011 and give them the proper review treatment in abbreviated form.
Even though I thought A Sense of Purpose was pretty lame, I’m not ready to feel too cynical about In Flames’ new album, Sounds of a Playground Fading. Soundtrack to Your Escape wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, either, but the band followed it up with Come Clarity, an album I really like (power ballad and all!)… my point being that IF can still turn it around. They’re not in Metallica/”Why even bother getting your hopes up?” territory yet.
Unfortunately, their new, in-the-studio video only has a little bit of new music, and while the riff sounds cool enough, it’s not nearly enough to make even a snap judgment upon. But go ahead and check it out and see what you think — the music shows up around the 3:20 mark. The rest of the video is pretty standard stuff which I didn’t find that exciting, but of course you’re free to watch the whole thing, too.
Oh, and apparently this was made by Anders Bjorler, which explains why he was in the studio with In Flames that time we got excited that he might be their new guitar player.
Sounds of a Playground Fading comes out June 21 on Century.
If you’d've told me in 1993 that some Swedish metal band that sings about Viking lore would sell more records than Pearl Jam 18 years later, I’d've called you crazy. Shit, if you’d have told me earlier this year that Amon Amarth would sell more records than Pearl Jam I’d've called you crazy. But that’s exactly what happened this past week. Sure, the Pearl Jam release in question was a reissue, but still; how unlikely is it that Amon Amarth, of all bands, have one of the strongest metal debuts of 2011 so far, strong enough to net them #1 on the Hard Music chart — selling roughly 14x the number of copies The Haunted’s new album did (in the U.S.) — and to beat out the enduring monolith that is Pearl Jam? Pretty fucking unlikely, and pretty fucking awesome too. Slow and steady wins the race, I suppose… 13 years and 8 albums in, Amon Amarth have broken through.
Whitesnake (!), Within Temptation, Cavalera Conspiracy, Becoming the Archetype, Obscura and The Haunted also cracked the Top Hard Music Top 100 in their first week of U.S. release; those releases and other notable charting albums after the jump.
Obviously this just an April Fools’ joke… but I would actually be all-for Dolving stepping into Scott Weiland’s shoes. As The Haunted’s latest album, Unseen, proves, Dolving has a great voice for hard rock, and he’s actually got cred.
Alas, it will never happen… but a fella can dream, can’t he?
New records by Born of Osiris, Tesseract, Protest the Hero, The Haunted and Agnostic Front oughtta peak buyers’ eyes at their favorite e-tailer today, while a handful of other releases are hitting the cloud as well. Check out Vic Vaughn’s preview of each after the jump.
Oh my fuck, you guys, IT IS 71 DEGREES OUTSIDE. I was gonna stay home and watch Vanilla Ice’s underrated cinemetallic classic, Cool as Ice, but instead I am getting stoned and going for a long, long walk in the sun. Quickly, before I ditch you losers to actually enjoy life, here’s what we did this week:
That’s right, friends: we’re still a week away Century Media’s release of Unseen, the latest offering from The Haunted, but you can stream the entire album right now, right here at MetalSucks. You will quickly find that while Unseen is, by and large, not a super-fast, super-crushing metal album in the vein of some of the band’s past work, it IS a catchy-as-the-plague, all-killer-no-filler hard rock album… something we have far too little of in the world today.
Check out Unseen below, and then pre-order it here. Like we said, Century will release Unseen on March 22.
Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…
So, yesterday on the Deciblog we posted a long-ass Justify Your Shitty Taste on “Guns N’ Roses”’ Chinese Democracy, which your fearless co-leader Axl Rosenberg boldly cosigned, followed by, frankly, a surprising amount of you guys (which is to say, more than one). I’m not trying to be a dick here. I mean, I can get behind about 25 percent of this mess (the ballads), but I have fairly shitty taste in rock music. As in, I still think Eight Arms to Hold You kicks ass. Whatever. It was just interesting surveying our entire staff of about 20 writers in an effort to get Chinese Democracy written up, and the only person that responded with a modicum of enthusiasm was Shawn Macomber. Fair enough. But then, cue a minor avalanche of vehement, assured hell yeahs. That’s probably the most satisfying thing about this series — watching that groundswell of minority voices band together for a day or two with a shared “fuck you, I told you it was good!”
Anyway, scrolling through the new issue’s reviews section, I don’t really see any future JYSTs. (Just wait ’til May’s The Haunted review, though.) April is more about giving credit to things that don’t hopelessly suck. Hence, we gave Jonah Hegg his second solo cover (order here). I don’t think the other four Amon Amarth dudes are sweating it; they get their chance to Vike out (ahem) in the table of contents and the actual story. Elsewhere, if you’re a J. Bennett fan, this is your issue — he goes head to head with Glen Benton (I’ll leave the obvious jokes to him), bros down in Alaska with Every Time I Die and files a long-overdue Hall of Fame on Mercyful Fate’s Melissa. If you’re a fan of any other writer on staff, well, they do stuff, too: features on Trap Them, Drugs of Faith, Primordial, Rotten Sound and Subrosa — the latter of which being almost as good as Veruca Salt in their prime.
-AB
You can buy the April 2011 issue of Decibelhere, or justget a full subscription to ensure that you never miss a review of a future “Justify Your Shitty Taste” entry.
Thursday, February 24th, 2011 at 11:00am by Axl Rosenberg
The Haunted have released the title track from their new album, Unseen, on their Facebook page (and you don’t even hafta click the “like” button to hear it). It’s technically the third song we’ve heard from the album (first one here, second one here), but of those samplings, it’s the first high-quality, in-studio track, and thus might give us the best sense of what we’re in for.
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 at 10:30am by Axl Rosenberg
Last month we got to hear a live version of “No Ghost,” a new song from The Haunted’s forthcoming Unseen; now another new track, “Disappear,” has been played on the radio, which, of course, means it’s now on the internet. You can check it out below.
What’s interesting about “Disappear,” especially in conjunction with “No Ghost,” is that it suggests a) that Unseen is gonna be a shamelessly hook-heavy album, and b) that Unseen is gonna make a lot of people very, very angry. Personally, I think both songs are great; I don’t even know if they’re metal so much as they’re hard rock, but it’s nice to hear something so catchy amidst all the unstructured noise that bands are trying to pass off as music these days. Unseen might not exactly be Made Me Do It, but I am betting that it’s gonna be really, really good.
But who knows? Maybe there’s some way heavier shit we still haven’t heard on the album. As long as it gets stuck in my head the way this track did, I really do not care.
Friday, January 28th, 2011 at 11:00am by Axl Rosenberg
Didja know that The Haunted have a new album coming out? Didja, didja? Well, they do. It’s called Unseen, and it’s supposed to be out sometime in March on Century. Now, that news alone should be enough to get you all hot n’ bothered, but in case it isn’t, the band performed a new song, “No Ghost,” at some Swedish radio thinger this weekend, and you can watch pro-shot footage of the performance below. I’m really, really digging the song — it’s catchy as the plague, and sounds very much in the vein of the material from 2007′s The Dead Eye, which is fine by me. Also, Peter Dolving is rocking an epic beard now, which makes him 100% cooler than he already was.
Good stuff, right? And after the jump, you can check out the album art for Unseen. It’s nothing mind-blowing, but as long as the music on the album is good, I guess we can let that slide…
Monday, November 29th, 2010 at 3:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
Earlier today, I downloaded Earache’s new, completely free Extreme Stage Diving app, a video game in which “you take control of a burly bouncer and throw the pesky stage invader as far into the crowd as possible.” And I’m happy to report that it’s going to make an excellent time waster (that’s a compliment), and may soon usurp Slayer Pinball (or whatever the fuck it’s called) as my favorite metal-themed smartphone procrastination tool. It’s simple yet challenging, it appeals to my 8-bit sensibilities, there’s plenty of blood, and, oh yeah, the soundtrack is killer.
Yes, of course, this is meant to help Earache promote their shit. But the game features a bare minimum of songs by Earache bands I don’t like (cough, Oceano, cough cough), and those songs are more than offset by the inclusion of groups like At the Gates, Deicide, Brutal Truth, Decapitated, and Wormrot. And whomever designed the game was smart/cool enough to make it so that you can skip to whichever of the ten featured songs you like — in other words, if Bonded by Blood comes up and you don’t like Bonded by Blood, you can easily move along to The Haunted or whatever your particular cup of tea might be. (And apparently there’s a bonus track that you can unlock, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m hoping it’s a Godflesh song, even though that would make no mothertruckin’ sense whatsoever.)
Check out a sample video below…
If you go here and give Earache your e-mail address, you can also potentially win the helmet the charcter in the game wears, although I think the game itself is a much cooler prize, and you don’t need to enter no contest to get it.
You can download the game here. Like I said, it’s totally free, so you really have nothing to lose by trying it out (other than the time you’re going to spend playing this instead of doing something productive). And you can get the full track list after the jump.
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 at 12:30pm by Leyla Ford
At the Accept show I went to last week, I had a pretty funny moment with the boy when I said that it sounded like they were singing “We are nice” instead of “Neon nights.” Which got me thinking: I mishear lyrics a lot. It could be because I’m deaf, or people just don’t enunciate, or that most of the bands I listen to don’t really know English that well so they probably are singing stupid shit. Or it could be that I’d rather hear something than what I actually do — I mean, Bob Ezrin wanted a new, edgy song to appeal to those hip youngsters and thought Alice Cooper was singing “I’m edgy,” instead of “I’m eighteen.” Personally, I’m way more entertained with what my brain, or other people’s brains (as I got some volunteers for this task), comes up with. So here are a few songs that made it to my Misheard Lyrics Hall of Fame.
Last week we offered up two copies of Misery Index’s latest DM slammer Heirs to Thievery. A lot of you entered the contest which is great because the album rules, so theoretically this would mean you’ve all got great taste… but let’s not kid ourselves, you just like free shit. Here are the winning captions to the photo at right:
Kelly: “Biebercore.”
Joe: “…and that is how the CEO of rise records found himself on the sex offender registry.”
Well played, kiddos. This week we’re giving away a copy of The Haunted’s brand new live DVD Road Kill, an exclusive clip of which can be viewed here. To win, just post a funny caption for the photo below. (Remember, if you’re using FB Connect to login, include an email address with your comment so we can contact the winner).
Congrats to Jeremy Byrd and Jenna LaGras, who both correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Sinworm (finally!). For their troubles, Jeremy and Jenna each win a copy of The Haunted’s excellent new DVD/CD set, Road Kill. (And in case ya haven’t seen it, we have an exclusive clip from the DVD here.)
But don’t cry if you didn’t win – I have one last copy of this bad boy to unload this week. All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and youraddress. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select a winner and announce his or her name next week.
This week’s logo was suggested by reader Evren Seven… thanks, Evren!
