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| It is a misty Monday evening I step into the club The Tivoli in Helsingborg to look at The Haunted on their Scandinavian tour in December. The audience isn�t that big, roughly about 60 people. The night before this evening, they played at KB in Malm�. The audience were about 100 people then, according to Marco (Aro, vocals. Ed.). - But then again, we have played 8 times only here in Scandinavia the latest year! The gig in itself wasn�t of highest class, even though it wasn�t bad at all. They didn�t manage to give it all on stage, but this has an explanation with the reason being that they all more or less are I�ll. -But we never fucking cancel a gig, Marco screams loudly in the microphone. Later on, when I meet up with Marco in the lobby of Grand Hotel in Helsingborg to do the interview, the mood is in a great swing. -I feel better in my throat now, even if it still feels like shit. But I definitely feel it�s getting all better. We�ve just been on a month-long tour in the US, so my throat has taken as much pain as it can get. Besides, all the guys have been sick, for example I had a bad cough that tore apart my throat. Per (M�ller Jensen, drums. Ed.) got a very nasty infection in a wisdom tooth, that he, after a lot of what if�s got pulled out to later on go on a very suspectable penicillin-cure. Did everything go as planned on the US-tour, which you did together with Witchery and Cataatrophic (and on the first 5 gigs, Marty AD. who later on had to cancel the rest of the tour due to cartrouble. Ed.)? No problems considering the ongoing war with the talibans? - No, actually not. Everything went very smoothe and great. But America is a very weird country. They had big sheets and advertising signs and shit with pictures of Bin Laden with a target-picture on his face, haha. Anders Bj�rler, the former guitarist and twinbrother of bassplayer Jonas Bj�rler has, as we all know, left the band. Why? -He was really tired with the life on tour. Also he got a chance to study on the film academy he has been trying to get in to, and then we don�t want to stand in the way for another mans dream, in any way. We wish him luck on the way. But what also can be mentioned is that on some level he hasn�t left the band, as he still writes guitar-riffs for The Haunted. -On this tour we were supposed to have Mike Wead jump in on the guitar, but in the end things didn�t manage to go well with that. He showed not to be capable of playing our music, and also he had a lot of other things going on at the same time, so everything went dead on the time-schedule. He told us this only 10 days before the US-tour begins, but then our saviour came. Marcus �Sune� Sunesson (guitarist of The Crown. Ed.) came and fixed all our songs in only 2 days. So he�s been with us both on the US-tour and now on the Scandinavian one. No thoughts of keeping him permanently? -I can�t deny that the thoughts has crossed our minds, but with respect for The Crown we don�t want to do it. Sure, Jensen (Patrik Jensen, guitar.Ed.) plays with Witchery too, but for that matter we have an oral agreement between each other that The Haunted always comes in first hand, and for �Sune�s� part, The Crown is number one. That�s why we have decided that he shouldn�t stay permanently. The live album �Live rounds in Tokyo� is released in January? -Yeah, that�s right. It�s recorded on the Akasaka Blitz Arena in Tokyo earlier this year. It was supposed to be released in the middle of December, but we and the record company decided to wait a while til� after the Christmas-rush when it better can get some attention. Otherwise it will only drown among all other things coming out for Christmas. Why a live album? - It was so fucking great to play in Japan. Also, both Japanese TV and radio recorded our concerts, so we bought the material directly from these companies. We wanted to share this material with our fans, this experience of these incredibly great shows we did in Japan. Won�t there be any new studio material then? -We we�re at our best, writing music to the third record when this US-tour came up, and we felt it was a big thing with this tour, so we took a break off from the writing in advantage of the tour instead, and now we have this Scandinavian tour. But when this tour is over, we will complete the material. A dream scenario would be to have the record out already in April, but if you look at it realistically, I would guess it�s out somewhere in August-September. It�s the third album, and the one that is most important in a band�s carrier, but actually we don�t really feel anything of that. I mean, we write music directly from our hearts. We have always done that and we always will. We won�t do as Slayer, whom always try to make a crib by making a new �Reign in Blood�, which they fail with completely (I totally agree! Ed.). We will never do something like that. We try to take the music to a new level, but you shouldn�t expect any radical changes. We�re like��.we�re The Haunted, we sound as we do! And then we have this Grammy Award you won last spring in the category �Best Hard rock/metal � album�. Won�t there be harder and bigger demands on you now? -No, I don�t think so. Like I said before, we�re The Haunted, and we are the one�s we are. Still it�s the genuine that wins at last. We took the price right before the noses of a commercial band like Hammerfall, and that feeling was amazing. They even rented �Svullo� (a famous Swedish guy! Ed.) to collect their price, so it was fun to put them were they belong, and to show that they aren�t good. But OK, I shall not deny that there is a lot to thank Hammerfall for too, as they went on top of the charts in for example Voxpop (a Swedish TV-show. Ed.), and such stuff. They have contributed to metal getting bigger generally. But that doesn�t mean that I like them�.! Do you think your Grammy can favour Swedish metal in any way? -Yeah, hopefully. By seeing us win, we have the proof that metal is accepted. At least a bit on the way. In a dream world, one could wish that through this acceptance, every good metal-musician that stands in the rehearsal-room is coming out. It�s in the rehearsal-room you find the really good musicians. What comes out on the market is mostly things that have hit-potential. Metal is on it�s way forward in Sweden! The Haunted is big enough in Sweden, with the thoughts of the Grammy. But where would you think that you are the most biggest? -Hmm�. I think I would answer Japan and USA,. But sure, we are on our way forward here in Sweden too. Now we have been able to play in places we�ve never been to before in Sweden, for example that we played here in Helsingborg tonight, for the first time. And it kicks ass to come to a new place and play! Yeah, you�re beginning to be pretty big now. How�s the life as a �rock star�? - Hahaha! It�s definitely not as it was in the 80�s when you went in limousines and lived in luxury. The life on the roads today is everything else than glamorous in every way. But we don�t feel as rock stars, since I myself work as a smith, the other studies (and Jensen sits at home and smoke suspect stuff!). We do all this, to keep ours minds in reality. If you get to snowed-in that you really are a rock star or something, I think you more or less make a suicide on your band. But it�s pretty bizarre when you come to think of it��.somewhere on this planet you are a rock star in someone�s eyes. The �Tales From The Crypt 2� soundtrack is supposed to contain The Haunted, together with a lot of other big acts such as W.A.S.P. for example. - Really? That�s more than I knew..! It says so on your website� -Really? OK, then it is like that I guess. We were supposed to be on the last one, but things ran out in the sand. It was a guy on the record company that knew some guy in the production-line of the movie, so they nagged up a place on the record somehow. So I guess they have been pushing for this record instead, since nothing happened with the last one. But those damn records you don�t see anything of. They exist only so the record companies can get fatter wallets on the use of you. Nothing else! Since there are shit just like this, and a lot of other swindles within the business, what is the force that give you strength to continue? - It all started with all the bands you listened to in your youth. You felt that something was missing, and you start your own band to fill that gap. So in the first hand you play for your own sake, and in the other hand you got the fans, and the fans are really important to make you continue. Their appreciation is worth gold. Marco, you got any special words to finish this interview off with? - As long as the fans believe in metal, it will pay off in the end. If you caught us on a bad night, come back some other time, because it all keeps getting better and better. We are definitely a live-band in the first hand�. We shake hands and thanks each other. I take my camera, paper and pencil put my jacket on and then leaves the lobby of Grand Hotel to get in my fathers red Volvo to go home in the still misty night with a smile of not have made a total fool of myself on my first interview ever� - Mortii Tyrane |
| The Haunted Grand Hotel, Helsingborg, Sweden 10/12-01 |
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| Marco Aro www.the-haunted.com |