HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Made Me Do It – The Haunted

When THE HAUNTED first emerged in 1998 with their self-titled debut album, they came with a whole host of both promise and a storied past. The meeting of guitarist Patrik Jensen from WITCHERY, a trio of former AT THE GATES members, (who had split up shortly after their seminal 1996 album Slaughter Of The Soul), in guitarist Anders Björler, bassist and brother of Anders, Jonas Björler and drummer Adrian Erlandsson along with ex-MARY BEATS JANE vocalist Peter Dolving, this was a bonafide Swedish metal supergroup and their debut lived up to its promise.

However, by the time, the band had got to album number two, things had changed and Dolving had departed. Enter Marco Aro, formerly vocalist with the criminally underrated FACE DOWN, when he was announced that he was the new vocalist in THE HAUNTED, the news was met with a great deal of approval. Changes were also afoot on the drumming front with Adrian Erlandsson leaving to join CRADLE OF FILTH and his replacement was Danish drummer Per Möller Jensen, who had previously drummed with KONKHRA and INVOCATOR  and played with Patrik Jensen in WITCHERY.

With this new lineup in place and a reenergised outlook, THE HAUNTED set off for a US tour with thrash titans TESTAMENT before focusing on a brand new album with this new lineup. With the band still on Earache Records (a deal that saw the band inheriting from AT THE GATES after their split), they embarked to Berno Studio in Malmö to start work on their new album: Made Me Do It.

The title of the album was a tongue in cheek attack on certain aspects of the media and the moral majority blaming heavy metal for various crimes (The Haunted Made Me Do It!) and an assortment of different infamous serial killers adorn the albums cover including Richard Ramirez, Jeffrey Dahmer and Albert Fish, which demonstrated a jet black sense of humour from the band.

This album is as meticulous when it comes to its riffs and melodies as a serial killer planning their next victim. THE HAUNTED take on a whole new lease of life as a band, and showed that the new lineup were more than up to the task of raising their musical game to the next level. Every member of the band put in a grade A performance on the record, and it was an instant hit when it was released on Halloween in the year 2000.

From the SLAYER worshipping (a band who were no strangers to courting controversy with their music and being unfairly blamed for the misdeeds that THE HAUNTED referenced in the album’s title) opening strains of ….Dark Intentions onwards, Made Me Do It was a masterpiece that mixed up razor sharp riffs and powerful grooves with a strong sense of melodic nature.

Songs like Bury Your Dead, Trespass and Human Debris demonstrated the brutality that THE HAUNTED revel in, with Marco Aro’s vocals sounding formidable throughout, while a song like Under The Surface added clean singing and a reverb effect to balance with the heaviness. 25 years on and the whole experience still sounds very powerful.

With the band’s debut album still very much in the shadow of AT THE GATES and their split, Made Me Do It saw THE HAUNTED very much come into their own as a band and their sound (that mixed thrash metal, melodic death metal and hardcore) suited their new vocalist and the rest of their personnel perfectly.

Made Me Do It was followed with a serious bout of touring that saw THE HAUNTED join forces with the likes of ENTOMBED, NILE and IN FLAMES on the live stage and the songs from the new album went down really well with Marco Aro and Per Möller Jensen firmly establishing themselves within the band.

Made Me Do It ushered in a new era for THE HAUNTED and Swedish metal and their next album, One Kill Wonder from 2003, continued that upward trajectory. Constant lineup changes perhaps slowed down the band’s progress a tad however, with Aro leaving the band and being replaced by original singer Peter Dolving, but as the band continued making albums with Dolving, he left again in 2011 and this paved the way for a second coming with Marco Aro. The resulting albums, 2014’s Exit Wounds, 2017’s Strength In Numbers, and 2025’s Songs Of Last Resort, a quarter of a century on from Made Me Do It, and much like when they blasted back to life with that album, they have done it again twenty five years later.

Fresh from a return to these shores with an appearance on the main stage at Damnation Festival in Manchester, THE HAUNTED showed that they had lost none of their razor sharp brutality and when they played the Made Me Do It songs Bury Your Dead, Dark Intentions and Trespass, the crowd roared their approval and went as crazy as they did when these songs were first played live and shows the timeless nature of the Made Me Do It album, a testament to the quality of the album and THE HAUNTED as a band.

Made Me Do It was originally released on October 31st, 2000 via Earache Records.

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