It’s a long post-work trip across the Pennines on a Friday and I arrive just in time to see the blood-drenched Red Method leaving the stage; I’m assured I missed out. Up next are Swedish veterans The Haunted.
“I’ve been waiting for this for seventeen years”, says the man next to me. Although the Haunted have played shows in England in that time (including in Manchester at last year’s Damnation), this is one of a rare few UK appearances for a band that has been together for thirty years.
Their line-up has seen numerous changes since the band formed out of the breakup of At The Gates. Marco Aro is their second vocalist and talks fondly of some of tonight’s material being the songs that turned him on to The Haunted in the 90s. The set mixes material from their classic era, including 99, as well as from last year’s album Songs of Last Resort.
The Haunted warm the audience up quickly and the pit soon fills most of the shallow floor space at Rebellion, and the venue is soon jumping. There’s no barrier and the stage-divers include a guy who must be over 100kg and a woman in a leg brace – so it’s not just the band giving their all. The Haunted are constantly changing gears and showcase consummate stagecraft, down to the guitarists sneaking notes onto one-another’s instruments and Patrik Jensen letting the crowd strum his guitar while shaking hands with them. These touches and Aro’s chat with the crowd – rather than being limited to the classic death metal “scream the song name before it starts” – make for a really connected experience, rather than just a performance.
The sound of the mix is surprisingly light and feels a bit odd to me at first. It’s definitely more “hi-fi” than “wall of noise” and the raw vocal sound with slap-back delay only works because of Aro’s vocal technique, delivering a variety of scream, sing and shout brutally. Once I get used to it, though, the sound is refreshing compared to the muddiness of the sound at Victoria Warehouse, say. It’s very clear and crisp and every instrument cuts through well without ever sounding weedy or anaemic. This could partly be down to the band exclusively using guitars from Solar Guitars tonight, which is owned by lead guitarist (and prolific YouTuber) Ola Englund, and which aims its products at thrash and metal players.
The guitar arrangements are mostly “classic thrash”, with no low-B or severe de-tuning. It really has an almost classic-rock feel at times, for example in Time Will Not Heal. Aro introduces that song by saying “We’re a groovy band”, and he’s right; there is a lot more going on with Adrian Erlandsson’s drumming than it first seems, with driving beats and crazy fills and accents in there to offset the relentless blast beats and the intensity of songs like Hell is Wasted on the Dead, which hits even harder than the recorded version.
This is an impressively intense, technical and energetic performance from the whole band even without considering that, as Aro reminds us before Hate Song, he and the founding members of this band are all, give or take, 55 years old.
The Haunted bring full-bore enthusiasm to Manchester despite having played a sold-out Underworld in Camden last night. Aro says “London was great and I was worried [about tonight] but this is better”. Obviously you could expect this level of audience-fluffing from such an experienced band but it becomes clear at the end of the show how genuinely stoked they are to be here. The whole band stay behind hugging and talking to the audience, giving out guitar picks and signing set lists for this room full of committed, enthusiastic fans.
Details of forthcoming events at Rebellion can be found at Rebellion | Events
I've been playing bass guitar and guitar for over half my life. I last played bass in in a band called Electromotive and as a singer-songwriter I have written songs about cheese and vajazzles (separate songs!). I started out listening to 60s, 70s and 80s rock as a kid and I was in to grunge and U.S. punk and ska in the 90s. Since then, I've broadened my tastes and I like the best of all styles of music, even country. I've been writing for Silent Radio since it started.
