A long eight years after their last album, 2017's forgettable Strength in Numbers, Swedish institution The Haunted have returned, having taken a longer break between releases than ever before in their history. And you can hear this in Songs of Last Resort, the band's best album with Marco Aro since One Kill Wonder and a real declaration of intent to reclaim their throne as some of the heaviest purveyors of modern metal around. Past iterations of The Haunted may have wavered in the hunt for heaviness, "Swedish Slayer" tag or not, yet despite the likes of Unseen (hey, some of us liked it!) that showed the band under Peter Dolving having something of an identity crisis, there's nothing like that here. With opening and closing tracks giving something of a loose theme of warfare and devastation thanks to brief sections of sampled voices talking of nuclear launches and fallouts, the ominous mood is set... And the moment that opener Warhead actually hits with the thrashy riffs provided by guitarists Patrik Jensen and Ola Englund galloping along, Erlandsson's drum battery and Marco Aro's bellow, it all just works and propels the listener into the sort of headbanging frenzy that the band have promised all along.

This is despite really being the opposite of original, Warhead especially sounding like a lost Slayer track from the Divine Intervention era at points with more of the widdly, melodeath-influenced soloing that helps put this firmly in the death/thrash camp for large stretches of the album. Sure, there's still much of the hardcore influence of yore. Yet as the likes of In Fire Reborn show, the riffage and general instrumentation is as close to At The Gates as Slayer, Pantera-esque groove making an appearance here and there (Death to the Crown, for instance) with aggression levels to the max. It's also a pleasure to hear Marco Aro's voice ageing well and providing something of the spittle-inflected rage that Dolving's angered shouts used to do so perfectly. Aro sounds just as rabidly murderous here, carrying the songs rather than dragging them down and having more variation to his throaty holler than before.

And the songs have enough variety to be interesting, with little touches like the synths on To Bleed Out keeping them feeling fresh (despite a slightly repetitive song structure) or the whiplash riffing of Unbound pushing things more towards the extreme metal end of things, not to mention the more melodic-feeling soloing which is far more Swedish in style. By and large the likes of Through the Fire and Hell is Wasted on the Dead (great title!) barrel along with plenty of classic The Haunted vim and vinegar and although there's a little more groove on the slower Collateral Carnage, it doesn't feel like a lessening of intensity. Blod Clots is a skippable interlude and that's really as objectionable as things get in terms of songwriting; it's still an effective build in tension before Salvation Recalled and Labyrinth of Lies provide a grander assault on the senses, the latter slowing things down to nearly Crowbar levels. A Sludge approach to future The Haunted releases would work for sure based on the showings here yet the band have been solid enough that this sort of death/thrash/groove is what we'll get from here on out, and based on Songs of Last Resort this is an entirely pleasing prospect. A very welcome return to form.