Interviews

Interviews: The Haunted

Smother E-zine's Jeremy Coulson talked to The Haunted's guitarist Jensen. He also plays guitar in The Witchery as well.

Smother: For our readers who are ignorant of such matters, can you give us a little background on Witchery and The Haunted?

Jensen: I trust you've heard of At The Gates?

Smother: Oh, yes. Definitely.

Jensen: The Haunted kind of sprung out of when At The Gates Broke up. I quit my old band, Seance, back in November '95, and I moved down to Gothenburg at the beginning of '96 and I called Adrian, the drummer, up on the phone and asked him if he was interested in doing a side project and I knew all the guys from At The Gates from a tour Seance did with them back in '94. He was into it, but he was so busy touring with At The Gates. Nothing really happened until July '96 and he called me up and told me that At The Gates had broken up and he asked if I were still interested in doing a side project. The following day we rehearsed for the first time as The Haunted. About a week later, Jonas, the bass player from At The Gates joined and we got another guitar player named John Metflud [sic] who played with Dissection and he was in the band for about a month or so. Then Anders from At The Gates joined instead. Then it was about until June '97 til we found our singer. We had a hard time finding a singer because I didn't want the growling vocals because we had that in Seance and the other guys didn't want screechy vocals because they were tired of that from At The Gates. So, we called Peter instead. When he came to try out for the band, he just walked in and I'd never seen the guy before. He just started to twirl around on the floor and got bloodshot eyes and everything and we thought, "We gotta have this guy." So, I guess in June '97 we were a five-piece band.

Smother: Do you guys get a lot of comparisons to At The Gates and does it bother you?

Jensen: Not too much, actually. I think just because we have a different kind of vocals. People don't do that comparison too much. Another thing is that we pretty much got off the melodic style. I write 2/3 of the album and it's a lot more straightforward. Anders was just fed up with melodies. We played the kind of music we always listened to.

Smother: What musical or non-musical influences have brought you to this point in your career?

Jensen: I think the technical style of Seance-I got bored with that. I wanted to write music that people could easily get into. I grew up listening to bands like AC/DC, which are still one of my favorite bands. I tried to combine the song writing structure of AC/DC with Dark Angel. I guess that's where the energy comes from.

Smother: I heard a rumor that you'd be touring with Morbid Angel.

Jensen: That tour has already happened. I think it started in June, but we didn't get to play on it, so you didn't miss anything.

Jeremy: Is that the tour with Vader?

Jensen: They were supposed to play with Vader, too, but I heard during another interview that Vader didn't turn up either.

Jeremy: Vader was there. I saw them on that tour.

Jensen: They were? Do you know if The Haunted was on the posters?

Jeremy: No, I don't think so.

Jensen: In some places it was and people thought that we fucked up the tour or something, but we had a lot of problems where we just couldn't go.

Jeremy: What's the craziest thing that's ever happened live?

Jensen: In Europe, it's allowed to stagedive, so people getting up on stage and tripping on something and almost cracking their head open and lot of blood-but I guess that's the only thing.

Jeremy: Do you like Europe better than the States?

Jensen: Both are cool. We love to play live. The latest Haunted show is always the best. Three weeks ago we played this open-air festival in Sweden with, among others, Arch Enemy. It was totally awesome. It was such great response from the crowd. We totally get off on that. People who think we're powerful on the album should check us out live.

Jeremy: Does the name come from anything specific?

Jensen: My first band, Whorechrist, we had a song called Seance. We took that song title for a band name. When we formed The Haunted, I looked back to see what we had, and we had a song called Haunted?

Jeremy: Has Witchery played out much?

Jensen: Witchery hasn't played a lot because three of the guys are form Seance, I'm busy with The Haunted, and our bass player, Sharlee D'Angelo, he's busy with Mercyful Fate.

Jeremy: How long did The Haunted spend in the studio?

Jensen: Six weeks, which is much too long for me. I don't like being in the studio.

Jeremy: Did you guys get angry at each other or anything?

Jensen: It's just the tedious, "Do the second song?do the third song?" I hate that. With Witchery we spent only a week or so. With the next Haunted album, we're going to do 3 or 4 weeks.

Jeremy: Witchery has a very unique sound.

Jensen: You think so? That's a cool thing because we just call it Metal. We wrote it like 2 weeks or so, and when you're on that kind of deadline, you have to use every good riff you come up with. Be it Black Metal, Heavy Metal or Thrash, just use it. If you can tap your foot to it, if it puts a smile on your face, then it's good.

Jeremy: Do you have any platforms or messages for these bands?

Jensen: Not with Witchery. It's more just like a good time Metal act. But, I think Peter's been through a lot of crap and he tries to tell people to enjoy life and not be that destructive and just have a good time. Be careful. There's a lot of bad things going down.

Jeremy: There's some pretty crazy stuff in "Forensick".

Jensen: Yeah, that was supposed to be an instrumental song. Then Peter came down to the studio and said that he wrote this lyric at 2:00 in the morning. You know, it's more like a forensic report on the world today. On the album, the lyric that Peter wrote for "Forensick" didn't fit into the song, so there's a part of the lyric that we put on the CD booklet just to make a complete lyric.

Jeremy: I like the non-stop power and Metal on The Haunted.

Jensen: I was tired of albums nowadays that are so heavy and downtuned. I wanted to do an album that I would like to buy myself. I wanted a very energetic album that you like to party to.

Jeremy: People take Metal too seriously.

Jensen: I like to laugh as much as anybody. I'm not trying to come out with a lot of grief.

Jeremy: Closing comments?

Jensen: People should look out for Haunted or the Witchery tour. We definitely want to tour the States as soon as possible. Beware when you go to a Haunted show-it might be lethal.