Review of the 3rd Studio Album Called One Kill Wonder by Swedish Thrash and Death Metal Band The Haunted

Sweden’s “The Haunted” has been bringing to fans their very hard hitting style of death and thrash metal since 1996. One of the albums that I have not reviewed before but will do so now is their 3^rd studio album released in 2003 called One Kill Wonder. However, one weakness of this band is that their song titles and album titles tend to focus on subjects that are not very positive at all and this may be a major turnoff to some music listeners. I decided to give this album a review because of the fact that Swedish heavy metal is so superb.

The style of the album One Kill Wonder is a mixture of 1990’s Slayer combined with death metal.

The Haunted is such a hardcore kind of band in terms of its heaviness that Peter Dolving is a better fit for this band compared to Marco Aro. Aro’s voice is rougher and lower. It is not of the hardcore shouting type that Peter Dolving’s is so it is harder to understand.

The album starts with an instrumental song called “Privation of Faith Inc.” The song starts with the sound of screeching metal gears before developing into a sort of slow song that Slayer used in their career. The Haunted in terms of their musical style are like a cross between Slayer and death metal but this band is FAR better! In the song called “God Puppet,” Aro shouts the word “go” but he does it in a death metal growling sort of way. The album’s lyrical concepts also cover the effects of religion on a population if they become too fanatical and what happens when someone is brainwashed by society as in the song called “Shadow World.” This song is incredibly melodic! Move over Kerry King you’ve got company. When someone is brainwashed, they can distort the values that they are supposed to follow and they may be overtaken by excess pleasure and greed.

The riffs in this 3^rd studio album really click and make sense in the context of the songs. It does not have as much melody as bands like Kreator, In Flames, or Dark Tranquillity but they are better than American thrash metal bands such as Prong, Exodus, or Anthrax. None of those mentioned bands has the kind of melody that “The Haunted” have. Demon Eyes is just a regular, heavy instrumental song that also has some good mid-tempo riffing. One issue that I have with this band is that they could have better, catchier album titles. One suggestion could be something like “The Third Wonder” or something like that. In this way, there would not be such a negative feel to the album itself. However, this album does not creep me out and it should not do this for the avid heavy metal fan. The fast song called Urban Predator is a song about the breakdown of society as the Bible and church attendance is being replaced by porn magazines. Unfortunately, even in the United States, porn has turned into a big money making scheme and it has caused many social problems. The band is trying to bring attention to these issues so that we can be aware of them. These lyrical themes continue in the song called Downward Spiral. We have to fight back against the forces that are contributing to what is seen as a dying world.

Having said all this, how does this album rank compared to “The Haunted” and “Made Me Do It.?” It is a little weaker than those first two and there is no song on here that is as good as the song called Bury Your Dead. But the musical creativity is good enough that they can compete with bands that come before them as well as other Swedish bands like Soilwork. The Strongest songs are God Puppet, Shadow World, and Downward Spiral.