Saturday, 9th August – From Dawn Till Dusk
As it is custom at P.S.O.A., Saturday offers “Frühschoppen” in the tent for the early birds among the festival-goers starting at 10:00. This year ASS COBRA had the honours of starting the party as the only actual tribute band of the festival, a tribute to TURBONEGRO. With their Rock ‘n’ Roll the brave fans had a soft – music, but not energy wise – start for the long hours to come. They were followed by MACBETH with a mix of Heavy and Thrash Metal who are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. At 12:00 the main stage was ready to welcome SCALPTURE who felt visibly honoured to open the main stage after having been mainly as guests to P.S.O.A for over 14 years. After accusing the festival management of saying they had become more sophisticated, they actually proved the opposite and fired their Death Metal cannons at the audience.
Then the stage went to French BLOCKHEADS, a Grindcore combo who had their first visit to P.S.O.A even though they had been around since 1992. They were followed by also French NECROWRETCH playing Blackened Death or rather Black Metal with Death Metal elements, while the temperatures rose and some people rather looked for some shadow in the back of the infield. SCHIZOPHRENIA from Belgium seemed just the right band for these temperatures offering Thrash Metal with some Sepultura elements. In order to get out of the sun, now was the time to check out NIGHTBEARER in the tent, especially if you wanted to hear some Melodic Death Metal of the brutal sort. Intense melodies joined brutal riffs and vocals and the temperature in the tent went up, not just by a notch.
Brutal Death Metal also followed on the main stage with Portuguese ANALEPSY, but this time without the melodic parts. Back in the tent again, Spanish AVULSED asked for “a quick wall of death” and splattered the audience and the band with blood, accompanying their neck-breaking Death Metal performance. Meanwhile, Swedish EREB ALTOR on the main stage took the audience on a mythological trip to the far north, not as brutal but still intense for the crowd. The fans in the tent were kept boiling with NIGHT IN GALES entering the stage, slightly less brutal than Nightbearer before but still aggressive and melodic at the same time. SKELETAL REMAINS on the main stage then stayed on the Death track but with their typical US style, reminding me very much of Obituary.
After three Death Metal bands in a row Black Metal returned to the tent stage with DÖDSRIT from Sweden who satisfied the crowds thirst for beautiful melodies. Less melodies could be found in the performance of PIG DESTROYER who blasted the audience with their American Grindcore, filling their short break with the heartbeat of a pig. With a good mix of clear vocals and screaming, Danish MØL engulfed the crowd in the tent in their atmospheric Post Black, while seeking contact to the audience as well. If you had a close look at the patches on the jackets in the crowd, there was one band of the weekend, which could be found quite often.
GRAVE from Sweden needed only a few seconds to get the crowd starting to their special old school Death Metal set, they had announced earlier. So it was no wonder that they forgot about time and took the overtime. Luckily, they were allowed to play at least one of the two songs, they had planned for the end of their gig. Still everything worked out well for the following bands to stay on schedule. KVAEN in the tent meanwhile combined the best parts of Death and Black Metal.
On the main stage it was time to cool and slow down after a hot and stressful day, while having a rare opportunity to see TIAMAT with their only German show this year. Rare also, because TIAMAT had dug deep in their material and pulled out many songs from the legendary Wildhoney album. Even though their Gothic Metal sound was hardly made for making the crowd freak out, they caught the audience’s attention with Johan Edlund’s remarkable voice and their fine melodies, having everyone slow down a bit before the upcoming headliners. On a side note, Johan certainly was one of the most polite musicians we’ve ever seen live in best David Bowie manner.
The headliner on the tent stage that night was Italian FULCI and they offered a stark contrast to TIAMAT with Brutal Death Metal bringing the festival – on the tent stage – to a worthy end. Then it got evil on the main stage with GORGOROTH from Norway who had brought old school Norwegian Black Metal. The stage all in red, with almost no longer breaks Infernus shouted his anger at the crowd. What else to add here?
And then the time had come for the organizer to address the audience for the last time, this time to thank everyone involved in the successful PartySan 2025 and looking ahead to next year’s 30th anniversary before BLOODBATH had the honour of ending the P.S.O.A 2024. BLOODBATH with Nick Holmes as their front man opened a headbanger’s paradise with high-level Death Metal and the crowd drew their last strength to do just that.
Looking back and ahead
Four days full of a great selection of bands, fun and community are now over. And it is time to look back. Even if, apart from the bands, there have been no great organisational changes to the festival itself, there are still some changes to observe. Politics has become a greater issue for the bands compared to the last years, which you could hear in their announcements, especially the wars going on at the moment. And sadly, more bands had to pay tribute to dead members, also by including them in their banners and, as it was so recent, to Ozzy Osbourne.
The festival itself sticked to its principles where the music is the most important thing. Food, drinks and merch were still available for fair prices, the sanitary situation quite good, the crew amazingly nice and the campground spacious and close to the infield. Our group had a fantastic time there and surely will come back next year from 6th to 8th August, for the 30th anniversary. The first bands have already been announced and as the saying goes: If you can’t decipher most of the band names, it surely will be good. Nevertheless there have been some critical comments on social media for what reasons ever which we don’t share. WE love this festival as it is and what it stands for: Pure f*cking Metal!
Please watch the following video of the organisers for clarification! (Sorry, it is in German)
First Bands for next year:
Amorphis, Testament, Hypocrisy, Desaster, Murder Squad, Wolfbrigade, Jungle Rot, Deceased, In The Woods…, Fleshcrawl, Firespawn, Sorcerer, Hexvessel, Sear Bliss, Tulus, Mammoth Grinder, Sunken, Gates of Ishtar, Sarcator, Wormed, Guttural Slug, A Canourous Quintet, Rats of Gomorrah, Baxaxa, Temple of Dread, Crawl, Endonomos
Now that was the first of two encores of the Trilogy of Festivals, another one will follow and you are invited to guess, which festival it will be. To give you a hint, it is not going to be Summer Breeze Open Air or Reload Festival but a smaller one again.
Online:
Please buy merch and physical music or downloads from the bands official sources and don’t stream it for free because it steals your artists’ income.
Text by DerminBoad
Photos and editing by Friend.X aka Mr. Deep