When I witnessed The Haunted’s performance at London’s Mean Fiddler recently, it was a life-affirming experience, and one that’ll stick with me for a long time to come. Here was a band that epitomised everything an extreme metal band should be; seething with a tuneful rage and throttling a hard-edged musicianship without indulging in even one ounce of tiresome fret-noodling befitting lesser acts. With some in the genre running low on their creative juices – choosing instead to become as musically indecipherable as possible – and others pandering to more morose atmospherics, The Haunted have emerged triumphant, slapping a HUGE smile on my face and reaffirming my faith in heavy thrash once more!

Returning with their third studio album for Earache after 2000’s acclaimed ‘Made Me Do It’ (which was given a Grammy Award in Sweden for Best Rock Album and a 4-week mainstay at the top of the Swedish album charts) The Haunted have stripped extreme thrash to the bones and coated it with a fresh, razor sharp fury that shreds through any previous notions of what is possible within the genre.

Towering above their European contempories with an unmistakably Swedish hard-as-nails attitude, akin to the likes of Entombed and At The Gates (of which guitarist Anders and Bassist Jonas play in The Haunted) they prise open this epic metal benchmark with the savage instrumental plodding of ‘Privation of Faith Inc’, easing you into the disc slowly as it heralds the fearsome might of ex-Face-Down throat warbler Marco Aro in the suped-up thrash assault of ‘Godpuppet’.

It’s worth noting here that when I mention the word ‘thrash’ in a description of The Haunted’s music I’m not talking mindless sloppy riffwork played fast for fast’s sake. Oh no! This is faultless, technical aggression played with pin-point accuracy and with mind-shattering results. Just listen to ‘Urban Predator’, ‘One Kill Wonder’ or the classic ‘Everlasting’ and its tension-building middle 8 and I dare you to hold back that smile! The ultra-melodic beauty of ‘Shadow World’ exemplifies perfectly their ability to blend hummable riffwork into their charged-up aggression and is yet another reason why they are only too deserving of the metal-god crown.

Indeed, this is a band with seemingly far too much creativity to contain on one disc and an album with far too many jaw-dropping moments to mention in this review. If you buy just one hard-core metal album this year, do yourself a favour and make it ‘One Kill Wonder’.