Live Review: The Hunna + Sick Joy - Empire, Middlesbrough 03/11/2023
Halfway through their tour The Hunna and Sick Joy liven up audiences in Middlesbrough’s Empire.
Kicking off the concert and welcoming the audience, Newcastle’s finest Sick Joy opened at 8 PM as a support for headliner The Hunna. From this live performance, the lo-fi post-grunge duo have marked themselves as a band to watch with their energetic performance setting the audience up for their night ahead. 30 minutes for Sick Joy was not enough, and I am saving the date for their own headline concert this November in London. As they performed one of their most popular songs, and my absolute favourite from their setlist ‘Painkiller’ immediately radiated energy from the crowd with their powerful guitar riffs and headbanging anthem. From their 2022 debut album ‘WE’RE ALL GONNA F***ING DIE’, Sick Joy continued their lively performance with the single ‘Talking to the Drugs’ filled with sharp lyrics and high energy with the audience begging for more.
Then the main event, indie rockers The Hunna takes centre stage, opening with ‘We Could Be’ from their 2016 debut album ‘100’, and it is no doubt that as soon as The Hunna entered the stage they had the audience’s full attention till they begrudgingly left. As soon as their performance began, they immediately captivated the audience, with a wave of nostalgia and that was only the beginning of their mesmerising performances. They continue the high with the audience as we reminiscence with 3 songs from their debut, ‘Bonfire’, ‘She’s Casual’ and ‘Piece by Piece’, and for those who have been a fan of The Hunna since 2015 this debut landed them in no.13 in the UK album chart and since then they have not stopped selling out multiple tours across UK, Europe and even the USA. The catchy hit single ‘Bonfire’ shows off The Hunna’s vocal talent and their connection with those in the crowd. Continuing this theme with their most popular single ‘She’s Casual’ and even though this single begins with a slow pace build up, you could feel the audiences energy buzzing as they began to clap along and sang the intro and at this point you couldn’t even hear The Hunna but it was an absolute wonder to be in the audience as fellow fans banded together to share their love for this single.
From their most recent 2022 album release, ‘The Hunna’ the captivating single ‘Fugazi’ gives us a change of pace with their screaming guitars and punk rock energy. Another single from this album which was on the setlist, ‘Untouched Hearts’ is an absolute opposite to the previous single as an emotional ballad which deals with personal losses that singer and guitarist Ryan Potter has dealt with. Further proving that The Hunna deals with different emotions and types of energies, and even with this soul-baring single they still managed to continue to captivate the audience in Middlesbrough. Continuing with their most recent release, the crowd pleaser song ‘Circles’ shows that this whole album is made for the stage, but if you like the Hunna this is so surprising as they are constantly amazing when performing.
A couple of my personal favourites is earworm ‘Babe, can I call?’ from their 2018 album ‘Dare’, which is personally a song that shows off their signature sound, starting off with a groovy guitar riff and drum pattern, this single live is sure to take you to a whole other world and the crowd certainly loved this single as much as I did with their crazy but outstanding and addictive energy. Another personal favourite, that continues to show how The Hunna reaches every area inside of rock, is the track ‘Dare’ which is an amazingly cathartic track and was so empowering to hear live, with the crowd shouting back, ‘And I dare you say it to my face now, And I dare you I dare you to come 'round, And if you're gonna play the game, I'm gonna put you in your place now.’ As this played as the last live track, it was hard to leave on such a high.
Words by Beth Simms
Photography by Renée Bennett
