THE HAUNTED Frontman Slams BLABBERMOUTH.NET 'Tough Guys'

EvilG and Lord of the Wasteland of Metal-Rules.com recently conducted an interview with THE HAUNTED frontman Peter Dolving. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Metal-Rules.com: Let's start on a bit of a humorous note. I'm sure a lot of people have been asking this — have you considered calling the new album "The" because every song starts out with the word "the?" Or is there some hidden concept behind this?

Peter: Yes, well ….No, it's very simple, "The Dead Eye", it's more like a marking out the middle of a hair cross, the bull's eye. Like hitting something spot on, hitting something dead eye. And as far as the titles on the album go, they're more like chapters. It's not really a concept album, as such, but as it came out, the songs had a progression well, we'll just call it "the blah blah" or whatever. … That's that song, then it kind of stuck with us. It felt, it just felt natural. It felt good to have the songs like that. In a way it kind of pacifies the drama. And at the same time it can kind of underlines the importance of each and every song having a definite story of their own to tell.

Metal-Rules.com: I also thought that the sound of the album was very cool. The first thing I noticed when I played it was the drum sound sounds very real and not overly processed like a lot of bands.

Peter: No, it is. It's not very processed. It's something that we actually spent a lot of work, you know. It's one of those things where, as we toured — because we toured and we did about 250 shows on "rEVOLVEr" — we got to play with all these different bands and we get so many records on tour. Everyone wants to give you their new record; and every record company wants to push forward with all these great new bands. And to us, it's just like "Holy shit. Everything sounds the fucking same." Why is ..? Whatever happened to some kind of …? Why is everyone sounding like their on ProTools like it's some kind of fucking drug? Also, when we were touring this much, we got to see a lot of bands playing, and we were like, "Wow! These guys are really not up to the challenge." It feels like … if you're going to go out and represent your music and your band to play for people all over the world … Aren't you supposed to be … If you're gonna make a record at least, aren't you supposed to be as good as what comes out on record? Aren't you gonna put some effort into it, some love and some fucking respect? And we felt that we wanted to make something a little more exciting. I understand. It sounds like us morons... We wanted to make it a more human record. I understand, it sounds fucking ridiculous. But, with listening ... The music that we really love to listen to—we listen to a lot of stuff from the 70s and some stuff from the early '80s—but, those records, you can hear the musicians.

Metal-Rules.com: So the controversy thing, obviously I've read some of your stuff; you've been speaking your mind on sites like MySpace and answering some of your critics from the site we just mentioned: Blabbermouth. What is your whole take on that thing that was going on? Taken and blown out of proportion maybe?

Peter: Honestly, when it comes down to it, I find it highly amusing, because besides what I say, there's nothing really special about me. I just happen to sing in this band that I love. That I have views that are not specifically especially radical or, you know. I honestly… there's nothing really weird or special or amazing about me. Except I'm in a band, that in my opinion is a good band. But for some reason, what I say pisses people off, and I think that is the funniest fucking shit. Ever. You know, sure I've had that effect, but I haven't had that effect on people since I was in fucking high school, you know? It's amazing. I take it the people who get offended by it are in high school. Probably are.

Metal-Rules.com: Is having a platform like MySpace, with its existing audience, something that you or THE HAUNTED think have benefited a lot from beyond generating controversy?

Peter: I've benefited from it for my own personal perspective. I get to write about all that stuff that happened; I feel like I need to. I get to write, get stuff off my chest and I really want to tell stories or get my emotions out to a bunch of people because I get feedback on that. I'm not talking about the feedback that pops up on fucking Blabbermouth, because that's not feedback, that's just blabber. But people actually do write back to me — a lot of people write back to me — and I get all kinds of reflections. People will tell me their experiences. I feel that it's, yeah, for me it's really … I've been doing blogs since '99, I think. It started out with this kind of blog letter that I would send out to a bunch of my friends. I'd just write, almost automatic writing. Then I'd post in a blog that it went on up until about 2002, I think. 2002, 2003 some time. Then I stopped as we started touring with THE HAUNTED, and then MySpace popped up. [I thought] this is great I don't have to worry about all the fucking — what do you fucking call it? HTML? The fucking coding, which I fucking hate. Here you go, it's all yours, which I thought it was great.

Metal-Rules.com: So you're not a big fan of the Blabbermouth site? I've noticed recently they have some kind of new policy about inflammatory or racist type remarks because it seems that every news item has someone replying with "You're gay if you listen to this band." "You suck." There's no real discussion besides insults. Maybe they're trying to cut back on that.

Peter: That's what Blabbermouth is. I know that the guy who runs Blabbermouth is an avid fan and he really fucking loves metal, and to him it's something that he really likes to push forward. I think it's great. You know, but you got [realize] that have the people that post are into the whole dissing, and mouthing off or whatever that is. It kind of took me a while to figure that out, but they're just barking like little myopic dogs that just want to get to bark somewhere. Probably, they're afraid of barking at their dads. So they'll go to Blabbermouth. [Peter snarls like a dog]

Metal-Rules.com: Tough guy.

Peter: Yeah, I am a tough guy. Look them in the eye, and they'll pee their pants.

Read the entire interview at Metal-Rules.com.