The Haunted’s New Line-Up is The Haunted’s Old Line-Up (Mostly)

The Haunted lost 3/5ths of their line-up last year when first, vocalist Peter Dolving quit the band, and then, about six months later, guitarist Anders Björler and drummer Per Möller Jensen followed him out the door. Now the band has finally announced its new line-up, which, funny enough, is actually their old line-up (mostly). Former vocalist Marco Aro and drummer Adrian Erlandsson have both re-joined the band (which is what I was hoping would happen!), along with new guitarist Ola Englund, who has been playing with Six Feet Under as of late.

In other words, save for Anders Björler, they’ve basically put their Made Me Do It-era line-up back together, which is a smart move if you ask me. Made Me Do It is one of the band’s most revered releases, and fans won’t feel like this version of The Haunted has absolutely nothing to do with the band they know and love. Furthermore, it presumably signals a return to the heavier style of music many fans felt were missing from The Haunted’s last two releases, Versus and Unseen — I mean, I don’t foresee Aro doing a lot of clean vocalst anytime soon, do you?

I guess the real questions are, a) can the band make a good studio album without Anders Björler?, and b) what does this mean for these musicians’ other projects? Erlandsson has been playing with Paradise Lost for the past few years, to say nothing of the seemingly endless parade of At the Gates reunion shows; Aro has been a part of the Swedish melodeath supergroup The Resistance; and, like I said, Englund has been with Six Feet Under. Will these guys all be pulling double-duty? Did Six Feet Under just lose yet another member? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, here’s a video announcing the new/old line-up…

…and here’s Made Me Do It, in case you somehow have never heard it before: