THE HAUNTED Frontman: 'If People Hate What You're Doing, That's A Sign You're Doing Good'

Brian Fischer-Giffin of Australia's Loud magazine recently conducted an interview with vocalist Peter Dolving of Swedish metallers THE HAUNTED. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On drawing both respect and ire from people who read his meticulous and forthright blogs on subjects related to humanist philosophy:

Dolving: "I'm really happy that I pissed off whoever was pissed off, because that would prove that they're right wing, conservative cunts! That's basically the reality of it. Because what I talk about when I write, and with lyrics and everything, is a very kind of humanist, egalatarian point of view. I'll look at different phenomena and I'll point at things that make me wonder what the fuck kind of society are we living in if we accept this or that. To me, it's really simple: we need to treat each other with respect and we need to try and enjoy our life, because it's a short one. We're gonna live between somewhere between zero and some are very fortunate to live maybe a hundred years. It's only a short time, and we need to take care of that time."

On people who are fuelled by what he sees as negative energies:

Dolving: "You have problems if you think that violence is a good way to solve conflict and you need to see a psychologist. You may need a long, therapeutic talk, but you need help! Women are not worth less than you are, the size of your cock does not make you more or less of a man. The amount of toys you have when you die does not define how the quality of your life was and your inner worth as a human being. We all basically have the same values as a human being, we just don't acknowledge that. We should. It's a beautiful world. We should look after it and look after each other."

On constantly keeping himself busy, both with and away from THE HAUNTED:

Dolving: "I never get bored. I wouldn't know what boredom is. Because I made a decision to use my life. I've made a decision to turn my life into something meaningful and to enjoy every moment of it. It's a great gift. I used to think that it was a curse. I used to think, well, I didn't ask for being born. But here I am, what the fuck? But then I realized that it doesn't really matter if I didn't ask for it or not. I have it. And that's cool. I can do a bunch of things. It's my choice to really to try to the fullest of my capacity to enjoy life, to learn more, and to turn all that into some kind of creativity of some kind."

On the mixed reactions to THE HAUNTED's musical progression over the years:

Dolving: "It's kinda funny because I think it's really a measurement of how you're really doing. If people hate what you're doing, I think that's a good sign that you're doing good. We get a lot more positive reviews, but the negative reviews are funny, because they really hate us! Some of these kids have a very fixed idea of what metal is supposed to be. If you do something else, it seems to be... I don't know! I think it scares 'em. They feel threatened in some way, like we're going to take away their right to like CANNIBAL CORPSE. We're not! We're just trying to do what we like.

Dolving: "We started playing in this band back in '96, '97, and we've always stayed true to what we like. And it's changed. We've grown. You can imagine what it's like to be with a group of people, travelling around the world all the time. This industry does change you, you know. And it changes your perception of things. If you're a kid in a small town or even a big town -- you hang out with basically the same people all the time, you don't see a lot of horizon-changing things. If someone steps out of that little box then it's gonna threaten your reality I guess."

On THE HAUNTED's latest album, "Unseen":

Dolving: "We decided, very clearly, that we weren't going to try and even make a metal record. We were just going to let go completely of the form as to writing the material and instead we'll come up with good, memorable songs and then we'll play them as we play music. So first came the songwriting and then we kind of let the music seep in and we played it, and we came up with this."

Read the entire interview from Loud.