THE HAUNTED Guitarist Says Producer Change Led To 'More Aggressive' New Album

Cat Unrapped of the “Collision” radio show on Australia’s Voice FM recently conducted an interview with THE HAUNTED guitarist Patrik Jensen. You can stream the full chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):

On working with producer Russ Russell (NAPALM DEATH, DIMMU BORGIR) on new album “Strength In Numbers”:

Patrik: “It’s a good thing to change a producer every three albums or so. We should have really changed already on the last album, ‘Exit Wounds’, but we lost three members back then, so we had to get, so to speak, three new members, even though two guys had been in the band previously. We felt that just because we had that big change in lineup, we wanted to keep as many names in the surrounding vicinity of the band as possible. For this album, [it’s] the same lineup as the last album, so we thought, ‘Let’s give another producer a try.’ We had known Russ Russell since our first U.K. tour in ’98. We opened for NAPALM DEATH in the U.K. and he did their live sound. He’s a great fellow, very funny, very energetic, and he’s done NAPALM DEATH, DIMMU BORGIR and so on, so we knew what he was capable of. We think he did a killer job on this album, actually. That’s a good thing with changing producers, because they can bring out something that the band doesn’t know is there. He put a lot more aggressive, harder-hitting edge to the music than we thought was there.”

On new guitarist Ola Englund:

Patrik: “He’s one of those YouTubers and Internet guitar players, so he has a huge following all on his own. I found him, because like every guitar player, we’re kind of nerdy, and we want to check out what’s this new amp and what’s this old amp, and there was this blond Swedish guy showing up in every YouTube search that I did. [I thought] ‘Who is this guy?’ I sent him a Facebook message, and he replied back really quickly, because I didn’t know back then, but I know now, that if you want to succeed as a YouTuber and everything, you need to be very responsive — you need to answer almost everyone that answers you, so, of course, he would answer someone who texted him. And so I wrote him and said, ‘I’m interested in this and that,’ and he answered my questions, and then I asked him a little bit about his music tastes. [They were] kind of similar to mine, and then I asked him if he wanted to join the band, so I kind of felt him out first. I think he has, maybe, fifty million views on YouTube. He’s a big name. It’s almost like we joined him — he’s that big. [Laughs]”

“Strength In Numbers” was released on August 25 via Century Media Records. The disc was recorded at Parlour Studios in Kettering, Northamptonshire, England.