Bangers open Air 2025 – Part 1
Bangers open Air 2025 – Part 1
04/05/2025
Memorial da América Latina São Paulo, Brazil
Review by Metalphycisist
Festival Overview
In 2023 the Summer Breeze Fest’s franchise was realised in São Paulo city – the place where everything must be massive to kick in the neurotic inhabitants who live in the biggest and most chaotic city of Brazil and South America. Rio de Janeiro is probably a better known place globally, because of its natural beauties and for being the home of Rock in Rio festival, that has always included on its line-up bands that were far from being Heavy/Hard Rock acts – like Yes, James Taylor, and so on. But interestingly, Rock in Rio only gives one day to Heavy Metal concerts for the metalheads – known as ‘metaleiros’ around here, thanks to the Brazilian media that coined this term to refer to heavy music fans, always adorned with black T-shirts, long hair, and battle jackets full of patches of bands they worshipped. In a few years, this legion of metalheads became one of the most peculiar tribes living below the Equator tropic and very dedicated to Heavy Metal bands – specifically NWOBHM and Thrash Metal bands from England and San Francisco’s Bay Area.
After another Summer Breeze festival in 2024, the brand of the festival was switched to Bangers Open Air (probably due to the price to pay to have the Summer Breeze branding). So, in 2025, the BOA Fest brought to São Paulo around 50 Metal acts (or at least Heavy Metal related bands) spread over 3 days. The festival split the bands over four stages making it impossible to watch all the bands’ concerts – unless one had a doppelgänger around. The audience that showed up on the three days of the festival was estimated to be thirty thousand people, from everywhere from Brazil and Latin America. It is fair to say that Summer Breeze/ Bangers Open Air is the biggest Metal festival in Brazil
The average band’s presentation was on clock thanks to the impressive organization and the sound was very acceptable most of the time – considering that BOA is an open air festival located on Memorial of America Latina a place that is huge enough to place the festival, and move the fans to each different stage area with no incidents. BOA 2025 was a proper Heavy Metal celebration to be remembered forever by the ones who were fooling around on the Memorial of America Latina facilities.
Choices had to be taken
I was only able to attend the final day of the BOA, sadly. But 1 day is better than no days, right? I had a VIP ticket, so I was able to watch all the bands right in the front row. But I couldn’t watch everything. So, I chose to bring to Ever Metal supporters two bands from the Brazilian underground, two bands which were the most awaited ones, and two bands that I watched ‘by accident’, as follows. In this first part of the review, I’m going to tell you about the two Brazilian Bands, and my two accidental choices!
Black Pantera
Black Pantera took over the Sun Stage at midday under a 28º C bloody sunny day, with no fucking cloud to refresh the audience – and we are in the Fall season in Brazil!
Giving a fuck to all this ambience, Black Pantera – a Minas Gerais based-band that practices Groove Punk/Hardcore and Heavy Metal that reminds me of bands like Bad Brains, Primus and Living Colour. Black Pantera is a power trio formed by Charles Gama – guitar and feracious vocal, Chaene da Gama, vocals and heavy Groove bass player, who impresses the audiences going nuts with his dread-lock hairs all around the stage, and Pancho Augusto, excellent on the drums attack – the three of them are charismatic players that left the audience in awe throughout the band’s hour-long set.
The band has a left-wing agenda, which may keep some people away from the stage, especially when the protest songs are sung loud and clear in Portuguese. The highlights were the opening song, ‘Candela’, that got everyone banging and opened the first mosh pits. Even those who didn’t know Black Pantera were sucked in by the panzer division that performed on stage, right in front of all the bangers in the area. Many approached the Hot Stage hypnotized by what they saw on stage and the surprising musical quality of its members, which is undeniable, whether they liked Black Pantera or not.
Black Pantera also performed the first single of the upcoming album, ‘Seleção Natural’, an aggressive song showing that the band will evolve over their musical career over the next years. To say one phrase to define the Black Pantera’s gig – 100% energy that captivated the fans who stayed around to witness one of the best performances of the festival.
https://www.instagram.com/blackpanteraoficia
Dorsal Atlantica
Dorsal Atlantica was one of the very first bands in Brazil that played Punk/Violent Metal, starting in the late 70s, gathering fans impressed by the songs and, especially, the band’s killer performances, which was unprecedented in Brazil. Just for the record, Dorsal Atlantica contributed a lot to Sepultura becoming a stable band, after the garage days, and eventually Dorsal Atlantica’s sonority contributed a lot to the Brazilian Thrash Metal scene, right at its infancy.
Carlos Lopes – known as Carlos Vandalo in the hay-days – is a very talented composer and musician who caught the attention of the audience with the hatred within his performance – even the kiddos that were unaware of the band’s entire history. However, they seemed to be uncomfortable playing on the Hot Stage for a small audience, made up of avid fans and some unsuspecting people who passed by the Hot Stage and ended up spending some time there, impressed by the hyper-aggressive sound of Dorsal Atlantica, playing at full speed on the PA’s, driving everyone crazy with songs of protest, such as ‘Guerrila’, ‘Vitória’, ‘Belo Monte’, and lots of acid comments to incited the fans not to turn off their minds to the poverty and spoiled politicians which always fucked up the Brazilian people in a greedy search for empty and corrupt wealth.
Carlos Lopes still shows himself to be a relevant musician in taking forward and beyond the undisguised hatred of Brazil, which he sees as a colony of the countries of the Northern Hemisphere to this day – and he says this without mincing his words. That was what Dorsal Atlantica loyal fans wanted, and they got what they deserved.
https://www.facebook.com/dorsalatlantica
Accident #1
I arrived at BOA around 11.30 am. and, as I told before, I went right to the Hot Stage to watch Black Pantera; you see, I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t know how to situate myself very well in time and space, so it took me a long time to find the Hot Stage (and I got confused even with the main stages, which were side by side); it’s something I have to deal with. Anyway, at 3pm under the hostile sun burning my skinhead, I had to rest a bit under some shade: It was a matter of life or death and dehydration, no matter how much water I drank. So, I literally threw myself into the shade in front of the press room with my ass straight on the ground and there was no way anyone was going to pull me out of there, no way – you don’t mess with a guy who is in survival mode!
Kamelot
That’s when I finally found out where the Hot Stage was – right in front of me, where I was passing out. It was 3:30 p.m. and Kamelot’s set had just begun a few minutes ago. I’ve never been a fan of melodic bands formed by extremely expert musicians who perform their songs perfectly. That’s the problem for me: they’re too perfect, which ends up boring me. But, as I mentioned before, I was sitting down and relatively recovered from my collapse, and, as the world doesn’t revolve around me, I took the opportunity to see their fans having a good time with the operatic and grandiose Kamelot performance.
To be honest, I can’t tell you the name of any of Kamelot’s songs or the names of the band members, so I did a little research on setlist.com and picked the musician’s name from Wikipedia! The fans got nuts with the song ‘Forever’ that everyone sang along louder than Tommy Karevic – who is a charismatic singer that kept the audience tuned in to Kamelot’s performance. The band invited Simone Simons (Epica) to get on the stage to sing ‘The Haunting’ which sounded very good and, as I was already recovered, I became susceptible to following the fans’ choruses on songs like ‘March of Mephisto’, among others. Long story short, Kamelot performance was impeccable to the delight of their dedicated fans.
https://www.facebook.com/kamelotofficial
Accident #2
I woke up and got up from the floor, and went to look for something to eat (I hadn’t eaten anything since 11:00 am) because I wouldn’t pass out once again. I ate some ‘churrasco’ (in Brazil we don’t eat ‘barbecue’, here we have real meat on a stick – little pieces of chicken and cow – the best protein to rehab my body system!) I also drank a lot of coconut water for hydration, electrolyte replacement, improved digestion, blood pressure control, cramp prevention and immune system support. (Yes, I ripped this from Google research, but my body already knew the benefits of that sacred water!)
Once again, a choice had to be made; It was 4:20 p.m. on the clock and I already missed Vader playing on the Sun Stage (3:00 until 4:00 p.m.), because I would rather watch Kerry King on the Ice Stage (4:25 until 5:25 p.m.). And I also let go of Nile’s set (6:10 – 7:10 p.m.) as my main mission at Bangers Open Air was to watch WASP – my top 3 favourite band since I was eleven-year-old – scheduled to be on Ice Stage at 6:50 until 8:15 p.m.
I decided to amend Kerry King’s set with WASP’s one on the Ice Stage. That is why I ‘saw’ Blind Guardian on the video screens, who were playing on the Hot Stage from 5:30 to 6:30, while I was fighting for space in the front row to watch WASP playing their debut album in it’s entirity. But, maybe, that is the beauty of this kind of troubled fest: one gets out of their ‘comfort zone’ and keeps in touch with bands that you would never go to the gig’s of usually – Blind Guardian have already played several times in São Paulo in the last three years, but I’ve never been to their gigs!
Blind Guardian
Blind Guardian has a lot of loyal fans in Brazil, and Power Metal and Symphonic Metal are very popular down here, thanks to the Brazilian bands Viper, Angra, and Shaaman – all of whom were fronted by Andre Matos, who left us on July 8, 2019 at just 47 years old.
Formed by Marcus Siepen (guitars), Hansi Kürsch (vocals), Andre Olbrich (guitars), Frederik Ehmke (drums), Michael Schüren (keyboards), and Johan van Stratum (bass), all the musicians are virtuosi on thier instruments, which pleased the audience (even I, that am not into that kind of musical style).
The audience went nuts with Bland Guardian’s greatest hits, such as ‘Time What is Time’, performed at full speed, mixing Power Metal with Melodic Metal and Symphonic/Power ballads, which is the average Blind Guardian musical proposal. The audience sang along like a choir to the melodies of songs like ‘The Bards Song’, and ‘The Quest for Tanelon’ among others – that in my opinion were anti-climactic moments because Blind Guardian increased the length of theirs hit songs too much just to let the fans to sing along and have the feeling of being part of the show, as if the band broke the fourth wall between the audience and the stage. And Hansi Kürsch spoke to the audience like a true master of ceremonies. Certainly, the fans would disagree with me, since it was evident that many of them were in complete ecstasy. But I dare to say that Blind Guardian were playing in a huge Festival for everyone to listen to their music – not only to their fans. It seemed to me that Blind Guardian performed a set that could work better in a small venue, only for their fans.
https://www.facebook.com/blindguardian
That’s it for Part 1 of this review! Tune in next time, for part 2, where I look at the two bands I’d most wanted to see.
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