Haunted By Humans - Live @ Godiva Festival '09

On at 1pm to an audience primarily there for bands such as Toploader, rain clouds looming over head and nightmarish problems with a guitar, things certainly didn’t plan out well for Haunted by Humans but perseverance is definitely one of their stronger character traits.
A lot of bands might have buckled under such pressure and scrutiny, a well versed act with plenty of experience, but I hazard a guess this is easily the biggest crowd they have ever played in front of, just when you don’t want this little issue to arise, fate has a funny way of planning things out.

Things didn’t start as great as they might have hoped. The first track failed to garner the full attention of the already fickle crowd and interest was waning; but then Haunted by Humans struck back something fierce with ‘Get Dangerous’, living up to the billing with haunting vocals and a sublime chorus hook, suddenly; everyone’s curiosity was spiked.

The momentum by that point changed distinctly, this wasn’t the sort of festival music you expect to hear at one in the afternoon. The strength and power behind the set was endearing enough to draw the crowd in, the set peaked (although by no means was there a radical drop off after) sometime mid set with a song that the band themselves proclaimed was “brand new” called ‘Killer Waves’, The kind of epic pop song every alternative band could do with to push them over to the next level. No question, this is there mainstream hit.

If I was going to dissect some flaws (and I guess that means I am) then Haunted by Humans lacked a massive amount of variety, at least in the seven or so songs I heard, and their set list layout didn’t seem to work in this crowds favour. Although these are minor niggles in an otherwise sterling performance, and they kept Toploaders crowd perfectly entertaining, I can imagine that’s no mean feat.

4/5