Among the Angels fest

Among the Angels Fest 2019

(The Young Ones, Ploegendienst, Spider Crew, Backfire, Right Direction, Excel and more)

March 23, 2019 at De Muziekgieterij in Maastricht

The Netherlands

Tilburg Hardcore on tour! On a Saturday morning we met each other (all packed with cold beers) on Tilburg CS and travelled all together with about 40 local Hardcore Punks to the deep south of the Netherlands (Maastricht) to have a really great day full of music / bands from our youth and drink a lot of beers! The party was too hard and the zine is already too packed to write very long lines. I can just tell you, we acted and felt like teenagers again! During the day we spent our time with chats, beers and short check outs at the bands ‘The Young Ones’, cool Oi Street Punkband from Maastricht, ‘Ploegendienst’, upcoming approved and energetic Punk act from Amsterdam, ‘Spider Crew’, nice Madball styled Hardcore band from Austria/USA, who played a great but chaotic gig from what I have seen. Backfire from Maastricht, who did a great performance of 20 years M-Town HC. We all (the people who were there) remembered from the old days when we were in our twenties. Flashbacks to our younger years (the late 90’s, early 2000’s, I was and still am a Metalhead but grew up with it as well). The days when Hardcore was the big thing in The Netherlands. The same story I can tell you about ‘Right Direction’, who did a great perfomance of 30 years!! M-Town HC. Promotor ‘Dave ‘Kinsum’ Reumers’, nailed M-Town to the ground without any comments. Together with old school Thrasher Henri and local Tilburg hooligan ‘Michiel, I drank my final beers till ‘Excel’ from Venice, CA, USA entered the stage (after 30 years, they were back in The Netherlands). I am in my 40s now. And their old school Crossover Thrash Metal tunes still wanted to make me jump around and made me even stage-diving after several years, but this was not just me. All the old farts, 40 plus (promotor ‘Dave

‘Kinsum’ Reumers included), respect dude! Thrashed and moshed around like they were all youngsters again! When ‘Excel’, played half of the audience was already gone but the audience who were still there thrashed to the great songs from their old school days, ‘Split Image’ (1987) and ‘The Jokes On You’ (1989). The singer moshed around with a broken leg and the guys still played full of energy, Skate Metal for life!  Truly amazing Crossover, too bad they never got get the credits they deserved. After one more final beer, we entered the bus again and drove back to Tilburg again. All-in all a really enjoyable trip with music/bands we veterans grew up with! Aside the fact I was always much more into Metal then Punk, this was for many a reunion fest with Punks and people who grew up together back in the late 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s!

(This live report was originally printed in Headbangers Zine Issue #10, Released in Fall 2019).

-Patchman Marco-