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The Haunted - Live at the Sheffield O2 Academy with Setlist 28/05/10

We say :- When you're support act on a major tour like Slayer's present jaunt round the UK you must really look forward to your days off. The question is what to do with this downtime ? Maybe sit in a hotel, or go for a beer ?

Well apparently not if you're Swedish Thrashers The Haunted. They spent their night off from the Slayer tour headlining an intimate gig at the Sheffield O2 Academy 2, and bloody hell they were good.

After a fairly lackluster couple of support bands, the pick of which were Neuroma, The Haunted came on stage and immediately got the whole place jumping with an amazing rendition of 'Moronic Colossus' immediately followed by a blast of '99' and 'The Drowning'. The wall of energy coming from the stage had to be seen, or rather felt, to be believed.

The venue wasn't that busy, so the 6 or so people who wanted to start a pit were given plenty of room to enjoy themselves, and they did, regardless of the fact they were pissing everyone else off.

Of course a small number of people trying to pit in a sparsely populated venue is never going to end well, and sure enough it didn't. As there was no dense crowd to bounce off one poor bugger went over and hit the floor, doing something really unpleasant looking to his leg. To their credit the band saw this before the security did and stopped the gig and got the house lights turned up so the poor bugger could be attended to, while the supposedly first aid trained staff stood around. Fortunately an Ambulance showed up pretty quickly and the poor victim of the nights revelries was carted out in a wheelchair to a rousing cheer and handshakes from the band..

During this forced intermission the guys came off stage to chat to the fans and were happy to pose for photos. I thanked the vocalist Peter Dolving for coming to entertain us on their night off and his response.... Thanks for having us. Honestly, could they be any nicer?

And after the paramedics had cleared out the band got straight back on with doing what they do best, blowing you away with top notch thrash metal. There was supposed to be a 10pm curfew, but the venue management sensibly allowed the set to finish after the earlier pause in proceedings.

It was amazing to see how tight The Haunted were as a unit. The musicianship was excellent and they have some killer tunes. Quite how they aren't yet massive escapes me.

After seeing The Haunted in this environment, it will be interesting to see how their performance on the big stage supporting Slayer differs. If they are as hot as they were at this gig, even the mighty Tom, Dave, Kerry and Jeff will have their work cut out following them.

Dizzy

P.S. As people are arriving at this page searching for the Haunted setlist, here it is...

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