Australia's The Metal Forge recently conducted an interview with THE HAUNTED guitarist Patrik Jensen. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

On playing last year's Ozzfest:

Jensen: "It was very hot. Also very expensive — $75,000 just to be able to play, which [comes out to] $3,000 per show which is kind of a lot for just playing 20 minutes. Sometimes, when you have a rotating schedule, you play between nine in the morning and one in the afternoon and if you play at nine, then nobody is gonna be there anyway so you pay $3,000 to play in front of 300 kids. So you pay $10 per kid you play in front of. So that sucked sometimes. But it was cool to hang out with all the people that were playing that festival. Although I don't think [last] year's Ozzfest was really as good for the touring bands as the previous Ozzfests were for those bands because previous Ozzfests, the bands were so much more diverse. On this tour of Ozzfest that we did, there were four Swedish bands and then there were maybe four more American bands that sounded Swedish. So you didn't stand out. I don't think we got our monies back on that tour."

On whether he would be keen to play Ozzfest again:

Jensen: "No, I wouldn't. My gut feeling or suggestion when we do discuss stuff like this in the band would be an absolute 'No!' That's not because of the audience or anything. It's just that it's not feasible at all. When we first got the offer, we really jumped on it because Ozzfest is the thing to do in the U.S. In hindsight, with all the bands being kinda similar, it wasn't any good. You blend in just as much as you do on a smaller tour because there's so many tours. There was no kinda high profile on doing the Ozzfest because the bands were too similar."

On the progress of the songwriting sessions for the follow-up to 2004's "rEVOLVEr":

Jensen: “It's been going well. We're trying kinda of new formula for THE HAUNTED because both me and Anders [Björler, guitar] have moved from Gotherburg. So I'm back in my old hometown now just because of a new girlfriend and I'm back close to my parents after my Dad was really ill in 2005 and I had to go home early from the CRADLE OF FILTH tour. So I'm here and it's only a three-hour drive to Gothernburg anyway and Anders is in another city closer to Stockholm which might be four hours from Gothenburg. So we're sitting and writing on our computers. When we do meet up in Gothenburg, it's not like I show the band a riff and then we try it. It's more like, I have these riffs and it's kind of a song. We come with our CDs and play 'em. Of course we can re-arrange them or whatever but it's kind of a different approach which makes it all kind of exciting. We've been playing music and writing music for so long, that actually any kind of change is fun. So, if I come up with a riff that sounds stupid, I don't have to convince anyone to try and play it because I can just add the drums and bass and whatever and it might be easier for the other guys to see where I'm going with it. So actually, we might have a more diverse album just because it's easier to show the other guys what the vision with the ideas or riffs is."

On what the fans can expect from THE HAUNTED's fifth studio album:

Jensen: "A lot of the guys want to try something different. I know that Anders really likes the style that he was going with 'My Shadow' and so on. I'm the kinda guy who likes the three-and-a half-minute catchy 'Hate Song' stuff… the '99's. So I'm probably gonna stick with that just because I love it. I mean, if you listen to WITCHERY, which is 98% me, that is the formula. I don't think that people will find the stuff that I'm writing for THE HAUNTED to be too far off from what I've done before."

Read the entire interview at www.themetalforge.com.