Making a return to Manchester at the Academy 2 to perform a sell-out gig last night (October 3rd), The Hunna came back to the northern city even bigger and better than ever.
Despite only rising to the attention of the world late last year, The Hunna literally ‘blew up like a bonfire’.
With the release of their debut, ‘100’, appearing on the scene over the August Bank Holiday of this year, the band transformed and switched around their 16-track album, resulting in a wonderful live celebration of the album.
A surprising highlight of the night came early on in the evening, with the support from southern trio- Blaenavon who appeared on stage last before The Hunna.
The band have a somewhat ‘large’ sound and managed to have the audience bouncing around to their tracks and creating mosh pits- which is rare to see during a support act’s set.
Forming over three years ago, I almost felt disappointed at myself for not hearing of the band earlier and missing out on their countless gigs.
They really are a band worth checking out.
“You’re the best crowd we’ve had so far,” frontman Ben Gregory exclaimed.
With Manchester being notorious for it’s lively crowds, it was the turn of The Hunna to take to their stage and once again provoke the audience into frenzy.
Opening their set with ‘We Could Be’ closely followed by ‘Still Got Blood’, the band gave the audience little time to breathe.
The first half of their set was arguably more dominated by releases prior to the album release.
Obviously these were more recognized by the audience, yet the new songs off the album still went down a storm.
Mosh pits were fun and provoked audience members to show off their best dance moves in the middle before choruses dropped.
From first seeing the band at Dot to Dot earlier this year, the comparison in reaction to the band’s music is phenomenal- and what they truly deserve.
From an almost wooden crowd at Dot to Dot, the audience was almost unrecognisable in comparison, with an electric energy weaving throughout the audience this time.
‘World is Ours’ is one of the new favourites off the album and the lyrics are evocative of the struggle of every band’s rise to fame.
However, it’s not just this song that has wonderfully crafted and uplifting lyrics.
All of their songs are infused with countless amounts of uplifting messages, spirit and energy, which appears to be reflected through the younger audience.
The crowd barely stopped to breathe, but during ‘Sycamore Tree’, phone torches and the odd lighter filled the air to the mellow track, which allowed the audience to recover their energy for arguably the band’s most popular track, ‘Bonfire.’
‘Bonfire’ undoubtedly received the best reaction of the evening, accompanied by an extended introduction before plunging into the opening lines of the song.
This ended their set, before the band returned for an encore of three songs off their new album, ‘Rock My Way,’ ‘Coming Home’ and concluding with ‘Bad For You.’
This proved a risky choice for the band- ending their set on three lesser-known tracks.
The audience became messy; creating unnecessary mosh pits when they thought the chorus was going to drop, when in fact it was the end of a song.
Despite this, the audience gave their last ounce of energy in attempt to engage with the more unfamiliar tracks, and ‘Bad For You’ managed to pull the audience together once again and was surprisingly successful to end on.
Abigail White 