It’s that time of year where we set out to interview as many of the Sophie, New Blood, and Jager bands as we can in the lead-up to one of the most anticipated festivals of the year, Bloodstock. Answering our questions here are Haint who play the New Blood stage on the Friday.
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Belfast, Northern Ireland.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
At this point we’ve been together just over 3 years.
Where does the name of the band come from?
“Haint” is an old term used by the Gullah Geechee people from Southern USA for a particular type of ghost. I think it’s a derivative of the word “Haunt”.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
There are not a lot of bands who we think mixes the dynamics, soundscapes, singing and growls in the way we do. We are still at the stage now where people who have seen us all have a slightly different take on what they think we are. We welcome that because we don’t really know what to describe ourselves as yet; and so far nobody else seems to have has managed to pin it down. There’s aspects of everything we like in there, from prog modern technical metal, all the way to something more groove-orientated. We’ve tried to represent in our music just how wide-ranging our collective tastes are, because that keeps it interesting for us and (we hope) the folks that listen to us.
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
Our live show is a little strange. Its still evolving because for a lot of our existence, we couldn’t play live, so even at this stage we are refining it and we probably always will do. As the songwriting expands and branches out, hopefully the performance will too. As it stands, the music we play is a little too complex to allow for jumping around like lunatics (us all being in our 40s kind of prohibits that too really) but I think we can still capture an audience’s attention pretty effectively.
Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
None of us have ever been before.
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Which M2tM region did you win, or did you come through other channels?
We won the Belfast region. We played our first heat (which was, incidentally our first ever show) in March of 2020, but everything shut down the following week so we had to wait 2 years to play the second round.
Can you put into 10 words or fewer how it felt when you realised you were heading to Bloodstock?
Disbelief, and then elation that the wait was worth it!
What sort of setlist can we expect?
Hopefully one that everyone there can find something for themselves in. We have some very heavy songs and some more mid-paced and moody ones, as well as others which could be described as both so we try our best to mix light and shade. Its more rewarding for everyone I think if nobody is complacent in predicting what might come next.
Which other bands do you most hope you’re not squished up next to so you can see them play?
That’s different for everyone in the band I think, but Killing Joke springs to mind. And I know we are all very keen to see Jinjer and Sleep Token. We will be certain to catch Nomadus as well, as they are friends of ours!
What are you working on at the moment?
We are finishing off an EP that we are going to release as a series of singles initially. The first of these, “Ares”, is set to be released the weekend before Bloodstock, all being well. When we are done with these, we will be looking into a possible physical release for the EP.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
Well I guess anyone who has been playing a long time has at least a few tales of taking the stage after a couple more shandies than necessary. Drunk guitarists playing while oblivious to the fact that they aren’t plugged in; frontmen stage-diving and not realising till later on that they’d been rolling around on broken pint-glasses. We’ve all got a “Spinal Tap Moment” to speak of, but they’re largely behind us now. In theory at least…
What drink do you throw back to get yourself fired up before going on stage?
Long story short, we don’t. At least not before we play. We kind of made the songs a little too precise to allow for any margin of drunk error, so we keep it clean in the run up to playing. Afterwards though, we’ll have some Rum please. Or Beer. Or Buckfast if its within reach…
