The Haunted
Unseen

A dud.

...And the review could easily end here, but perhaps it's best to tell a story from which a lesson can be learned. 

It was way back in 1995 when the swan song of one of the best death metal bands to ever appear on the planet was released: At The Gates. Afterwards, the band dissolved, conscious of having given their all and unable to produce anything better. It was then that the two brothers Anders and Jonas Bjorler, as well as drummer Adrian Erlandsson, decided, under the shadow of a poplar tree, to found a new band called "The Haunted", whose sound would move within typically speed-thrash coordinates (which is spelled like that, but is actually pronounced "Slayer").

And so, in 1998, the band's first eponymous full-length was released, an album of pure thrash metal "In Your Face", stuff that made some releases of the more renowned competition seem like recordings of kids angry over stolen candy.
After the release of said excellent work, drummer Erlandsson and singer Dolving left the band, and in their place came two other guys, one of whom was the phenomenal singer "Marco Aro". The second album "Made Me Do It" and the third "One Kill Wonder" were thus produced within three years, and they continued beautifully the triumphant rear-end widening begun by their predecessor.

But here's where things start to fall apart; someone - whom we'll call "the bad monkey" - suggests to the Bjorler brothers that it's time to stop, that it is no longer acceptable to play that genre, in that way, these days. They have to change, do something alternative, to avoid falling into the trap of repeating themselves. The result of all these unfortunate considerations is the departure of "Marco Aro", the return of the old singer "Peter Dolving", and the album "rEVOLVEr", which showcases a first - still acceptable - shift towards sounds characteristic of melodic hardcore (which is spelled like that, but actually pronounced "emo"). Sounds that will be particularly accentuated in the mediocre (a term attributed only in extreme acts of kindness) "The Dead Eye" (2006), where all the songs start with "the" (not that it matters, but it was nice to say), and "Versus" (2008).

After 3 years, we finally reach 2011 and this "Unseen", which, however, would surely have been better not to hear, let alone see. The situation is at least dramatic: the bad monkey has finally succeeded in its diabolical intent, namely to completely turn everyone in circles - them, and everyone else's nerves. The album is a jumble of bland ditties, which even aim to be somewhat melodic as they were in the previous two (and they are); the problem is that in the attempt to be original at all costs, even the melodies don't work. They sound wrong, out of tune, out of place, forced, bad. Truly, they sound so ridiculously bad that they're almost endearing, and even worse are Dolving's enthusiastic statements shortly before the album's release, which described it as "epic": a brazen face that even the best Niccolò Ghedini couldn't match.
In short, the feeling is that the bottom of the well has already been reached here disastrously, but - who knows - never say never.

Moral: each of us is born with a specific purpose, a task to perform, and the Bjorler brothers' task is to make people headbang. Never listen to bad advisors, never deviate from the path destiny has always had in store for us from the start. There's a risk of upsetting the natural order of things, the so-called "circle of life" - or, in English, "circle pit". But above all, of recording an album that, ultimately, is...