UMUR
The Dead Eye is the 5th full-length studio album by Swedish thrash metal act The Haunted. I regard their last album rEVOLVEr (2004) as one of the best thrash metal albums released in a long time and it´s safe to say that I had gigantic expectations to how The Dead Eye would sound. Great expectations often end in great disappointments though and while I wouldn´t call the disappointment great there´s certainly a feeling of disappointment after listening to the album.
The music on The Dead Eye is thrash metal with some melodic alternative metal leanings. Lead vocalist Peter Dolving still sounds aggressive but he has chosen to sing using his clean voice a great deal too on this album. I´m sure some fans were a bit shocked by this but for those of us who know Peter Dolving´s vocal style in his days with Mary Beats Jane, it doesn´t come as much of a surprise. Of course there were also clean sung parts on rEVOLVEr but this time around the clean vocals are much more dominant. Fortunately the man can actually sing. The Dead Eye contains both fierce thrash metal tracks and more melodic alternative ones and as such this is great for the variation on the album. Personally I´m not too fond of the alternative element in the sound though and I much prefer the more straight thrash metal tracks. Even the latter styled tracks are more melodic than what we´ve been used to from The Haunted and call me conservative but I miss the relentless fierce and aggressive energy of the early albums. I think it´s in its place to call The Dead Eye a "mature" album for better and worse.
The production is powerful and professional. It´s not quite as edgy and doesn´t pack as much punch as the production on rEVOLVEr, but on the other hand it´s got a warm and more organic sound than that album.
The Dead Eye is overall a very good album by The Haunted and it reaches the excellent mark several times yet I can´t give it a full 4 star rating. A 3.5 star rating that is close to 4 stars will do. So viewed upon isolated The Dead Eye is not a disappointment but compared to earlier great albums I´m slightly disappointed by the band´s new alternative approach to thrash metal.