The end of October sees the release of your new album, "The Dead Eye". For those who have not yet had the privilege of hearing the record how do you best describe it?

If you haven't heard The Haunted yet, our music it is a mix between the best of metal [laughs]! I don't really know. It's a retro Metallica / Slayer mixed with Black Sabbath / Trouble.

Given the phenomenal success of "rEVOLVEr" how did you approach the writing of "The Dead Eye"?  Was there any weight of expectation either internal or external?

There is always expectations within the band, but we really don't care about outside pressure when writing. We lock ourselves away and just write. Of course you are a little worried when you try new stuff as we did on "The Dead Eye". When Peter came back for "rEVOLVEr" we sort of did a light version of what we wanted to do on "The Dead Eye", and that was the case dating back as far as the first album when Peter and I discussed ideas of the clean vocals and and a certain guitar style. We tried it with Marco but he never had the vocal range we could develop and experiment with song arrangements. So when we come to write the album we just didn't let outside opinions or expectations ruin it for us we just kept on writing for four months.

The thought process of writing a song is very personal and individual, but when you are arranging a song it is very collective. On this album me and Jensen moved out from Gothenburg so the band is pretty well spread out all over Sweden. On this record we sent out most of the ideas over the internet to each other. It meant people could hear the stuff before they turned up to rehearse, which helped a lot. I did the major part of the song writing, then I'd put forward my ideas, along with the other guys and we try to make a song out of it. We then do a lot of adjustments, after Peter writes his lyrics. After the lyrics are down we make the most changes to make it all fit. Most of the times it's the music, lyrics then the final musical changes. Songs like "The Failure" didn't sound like the song on the record when it was presented to me, I made it a bit more The Haunted.

What was the thinking behind recording the drums at PUK studios and then the rest of the record at Antfarm studios? Why not record the whole album in one place?

It definitely wasn't financial because it was a really expensive studio. We could have recorded it all at Antfarm, but Per had recorded an old record in PUK studio and he really liked the ambiance of the drum room. The sound on "The Dead Eye" was very important as we have a very natural sound as we didn't have any triggers or sound sheets or whatever. We wanted to utilize the natural sound, so we needed a very good room. That of course is not so important when you record guitars as you can do that anywhere as you are looking for that compact sound. You could record it in a closet, and Antfarm is pretty much like a closet. It is like a garage. It's twenty square metres or something. It can house about two people at a time [laughs].

This time around I enjoyed it very much. The pre-production went on for about four months, so everything was in place more or less. That gives you a relaxed atmosphere when recording, you don't worry about lyrics not being written or you missed something musical that needs correcting. That meant we were much more prepared for the studio, meaning we can focus more on the recording and make the best out of it.

The have a small European tour planned for November. Are the plans in the pipeline for a full on European / World tour in support of the record?

The tour is just promotion for the album and then we will be back in February or March for a full European tour. We want to tour as much as possible, we are just waiting  for the right US  tour.  It is

always a gamble to get the right tour. A tour like Ozzfest was great, but it didn't do as much as we'd have hoped. It is however important to get our name out there and it was a huge marketing tool to be linked with Ozzfest. Every tour you do, you never know what you can expect.

Your deal with Century Media appears to have allowed you much more creative freedom than your time with Earache. How has the deal been working out for you?

Total freedom at Century Media. We had it also with Earache, but Century Media is a bigger label. So they can offer better contracts, and we did have some contractual problems with Earache. The old At The Gates contract, that was a nightmare. I don't think Earache is a bad label but they have some limitations that they can't really fix.

"The Dead Eye" is being released in a limited edition format with a bonus DVD of the making of the record. What was it like to have a camera on queue throughout the recording of the album and did the process change at all as a result?

Actually the process didn't change at all as it was me who filmed the whole thing. Everyone was very relaxed when I held the camera. So maybe that is something to remember for the future inorder to make people relaxed. Being in the music business for fifteen years you kind of get used to the camera anyway. So even if there had been someone else with the camera it wouldn't have been a problem I think. At the beginning I didn't intend to do a making of. It wasn't until I came home from the studio and then looked through the material that I thought that people might be interested. So I then went down to Gothenburg and did some more interviews with Peter to make it more complete, as I was missing some information. In the end I had over ten hours of tape.

We knew Tue from the past as he worked with us six years ago. He mixed "rEVOLVEr", which turned out a bit static but he had some great ideas and explained how some of the instruments were poorly recorded and he would have done it another way. Trusting his recording and production skills we decided to record with him. We appear to be on the same musical plane so it was very easy to work with him.  The process was the same as before, but we tried some new things. We recorded live for some of Jonas and myself, which was new. This time we played live on some tracks, and I think it is "Cynic" we took one of those takes we played all the way through. So you have some kind of live feel to it.

The Haunted have been labeled Thrash on many occasions, do you feel that it is a fair tag for the band to be given, especially when you consider the various influences you all bring to the band?

I just call it Metal. The terms Thrash is just a journalist invention. Our first record the term is justified a little, but we have become less Thrash Metal with each album. It is to narrow to call us just Thrash Metal, as Thrash is just one of our influences. It is a trend in journalism to categorise music basically to tell the reader what a band sounds like.

Was it a conscience effort on your part to try and record a completely different record from "rEVOLVEr" ?

What we did on "The Dead Eye", or what we really wanted to do was take it down on the mellow parts. Really experiment on the dynamics. That is something we are not afraid of doing, something new. In both At The Gates and The Haunted, I've never recorded the same album twice. You can't be afraid of loosing fan base, and if you are open to new musical ideas then you'll like "The Dead Eye". If you are only into the extreme side of The Haunted then you won't like it.

The band have just celebrated it's tenth anniversary. Did you ever imagine that you'd still be doing this ten years on from your inception?

We had no expectations when we started. So I am kind of surprised where we are today. We of course had some help from the fact that Jonas and myself came from At The Gates and Peter from Mary Beats Jane, which helped initially. And then of course a record contract helps.

Sweden is, and always has been a hot bed for Metal music, of all genres. What do you think makes Sweden such a prolific music country?

It is very hard to answer. I guess where we grew up I knew all the bands and created a scene, a mini version of what happened in Seattle. Bands get a lot of state sponsorship where you get financial backing to buy instruments and find rehearsal rooms. It's a cultural sponsored grant, so you can use for touring and recording. That is the remnants of the Socialist Government, but it's on the decline since the mid nineties, as the economy is poor.