Phungo meets Metal up your Life 2021 – 13.08.2021

Finally, on the 13th of August 2021, I went to a concert for the first time for almost a year. The last one was the Metal Up Your Life 10 at the Oettinger Villa in october 2020. And fate decided, that it was again a Metal Up Your Life. This time it was the Phungo meets Metal up your Life 2021, as part of the small, but very nice Phungo Festival at the old swimming pool of Pfungstadt. The doors opened at 18:30 and at 19:00 the young band Pentastone opened the festivities. For them finally the first concert since the release of their first album. And what a show it was. The band showed, that they missed the stage and they had a lot of fun. 45 minutes later everybody was awake and ready for the rest of the evening.

After a short intermission Oversense entered the stage. I did not yet hear a single song nor saw them live, until now. I only knew them from the collaboration between their singer Danny with the band Snow White Blood on their album Hope Springs Eternal. But during the concert I realized, that this was an error. Great band with a great show. For them it also was the first concert since the start of the pandemic and they had a lot of fun. All the energy which was held back during that time was released this evening and that transfered to the audience. Very cool show.

Third band of the evening was the local band ALL WILL KNOW, which is also the band of the organizer of the evening, Jan Jansohn. I made an interview with them some days before the concert, so I was really looking forward to be able see them again performing on stage. The expectations where fulfilled. Lots of energie, fun to play and intoxicating music was played. Of course they played an encore of some songs. It was clear, that the audience missed real good live performances and was famished for it. All three bands till this point passionately gave them what they wanted and needed. 

Last but not least was The Tex Avery Syndrome playing their set. They are a Modern Metal Band from Frankfurt, with core influences. The band presented a very impressive light show, which was really cool from the perspective of a concertgoer, but not so good from the perspective of a photographer. Combined with that was very heavy music which induced to dance.  Even tho the fans where not allowed to do this before the stage, due to anti-corona measures, but only before their deck chair. But they had a lot of fun doing so and the correct vibe did arise. As the band had to stop playing at 23:30 and not a minute later due to restrictions by the city, they did not play the normal “We go off the stage, wait for the audience to shout encore, come back and play” game, but simply stayed on stage and directly played the encore. That way they kept to the end time.

In summary it simply was a fantastic evening, which made a lot of fun and showed that a good metal concert can be made, even if anti-corona measures. Also the combination of the different bands was very good, with a good mixture of different metal styles.