In my view The Haunted are largely responsible for what came to be known as the new Wave of American Heavy Metal that includes bands like Killswitch Engage, Chimera and a few other metal-core bands, with their first two albums.

2008 sees the band release its sixth album. Versus continues along the path of The Dead Eye. The songs are generally mid-paced, groovy and fall under the post thrash sub-sub-genre if you want to be pedantic. The Dead Eye saw the band slow down and introduce some chunky mid-paced tempos and the lead guitar was prominent and at times impressive even if the album was a bit inconsistent. The format is essentially the same for Versus. The songs alternate between fast thrash riffs and slower sections and there’s no hint of the Gothenburg sound that the band used in the early part of their career. Unfortunately, there’s something missing here.

Album opener Moronic Colossus starts things off in typical fashion with vocalist Peter Dolving doing his usual mad dog barking style but he’s acquired some melody and the riffs now sound like all the American bands that used to copy The Haunted. Ceremony is easily the best song on the album but it still sounds like a Pantera discard with Dolving doing a very good Anselmo imitation. Skuld is short and full of atmospheric vocals and a heavy throbbing bass line but all it does is bore the crap out of me. River Runs has some pretty atrocious clean vocals and a vocal melody where it feels like Dolving desperately wants to be Pepper Keenan but the shining turd in this collection of songs is the absolutely terrible Iron Mask. It starts off sounding like a second rate American nu-metal band and just gets worse.

That is pretty much the problem with Versus. There are ideas here that should have made the songs work. The band hit the occasional riff that’s great but overall it feels like in an effort to stay away from everything that made those first two albums so enjoyable the band has become mostly boring and occasionally just terrible.

The biggest problem though is the lack of memorable grooves, riffs or solos. The band seems to be stuck in mediocrity. Long time fans of the band will probably lap this up as another terrific evolution but it’s not. There’s absolutely nothing memorable about any of these songs and Versus as a result is just completely bland.

Label - Century Media

Year of Release - 2008