Last March 14,Saturday, a few friends and I went to see the grand finals of the 2025 Pambansang Muziklaban, which is one of the biggest and longest-running battle of the bands in the Philippines. This year, it was held at Filinvest, Alabang Muntinlupa City, taking us more or less 3 hours just to get there, but it was worth the time to go, since we got to watch and know about new bands, we couldn't have known under normal circumstances, as some of them don't even have a platform yet to share their craft. At the same time, some of the country's biggest names in the metal and rock scene had also performed to further spice up the event.
We've got in the venue at 2:00 P.M even though the gates were supposed to open at 3:00 P.M, but we still ended up pretty far in line, which is just to show the sheer volume of the people who came to see the event. And this were just the line for male audience. There is a separate line for the female audience.
Eventually, the line starts to move and we've made it to the entry lanes. I was the only one in our group to line up to the Premium lane since my friends got sold out of premium ticket, but the event was an open concert, and the only difference between premium and regular tickets is that I got an event shirt and an extra beer.
Upon entering the venue, the first thing that I notice was that there were lots of police units that were deployed within the venue, and there were even police dogs with them, so we can rest assured that if something goes wrong within the event, authorities can respond immediately.
Around 4:30 P.M. the program finally starts with doing some brief history about how the event started and the goal of the event, which is to promote OPM music and keep Philippine rock scene alive by providing a platform for new artists to perform on a national stage, with the winner taking ₱1 million in cash prize.
Right after that, it follows with the performance from Setsuna as the opening act before the grand finals commence. If you notice that the band's logo looks similar to the clothes that our group is wearing, well you are correct. We got this shirt as one of the early supporters of the band, since they started their career in 2024, and we are glad that they were given opportunities like this to showcase their craft to people.
So before they start, we got to meet and have a little chat with them.
Going with their performance, I think that it was really solid and was well worth the 3 hours of travel. I want to enjoy the show and join the mosh pit, so I only took a video of their second to the last song Magliyab, which got its inspiration from Linkin Park's One Step Closer. Unfortunately, during the song, one of the audience loses his wallet and that person is someone that I often meet during concerts, but can't really help him that much with a lost wallet, given how many people were in the venue.
After their performance, there was a short intermission before the Muziklaban finalist performs, so we decided to go to the side, close to the beer booth to resume drinking, while also making discussions about each of the finalists to know who will we vote for the People's Choice Award, and the cups that we used to drink can also used to vote them. All we need to do was to drop the cup in any of the drop box of the band which we want to support.
After watching all the finalist performs, we decided to place our vote to VDS. That was a total of 36 votes for us with me having 7 cups of beer. With the 2 free cups of beer that I get from my ticket, that means I got an additional of 5 cups of drink before we casts our vote.
I'm no longer a strong drinker than when I was in my 20's, so drinking 7 cups of beer is already making me quite tipsy. Knowing that, I procrastinated on drinking, since there are still lots of guest bands to perform through the rest of the night. As a precaution, I also keep all my belongings to my bag, including my phone, meaning I also stopped taking pictures at this point. I just don't want to lose my things just like the person earlier in the event.
After dropping our votes, we came back to the center of the event to watch the other guest bands that will perform through the night, and whenever there was a pit, we join. At some point, we also goy Toshiro Kier of Setsuna and Jose Siscar of Wilabaliw decided to join us to crowdsurf in the pit, making it a more unforgettable experience.
Before the closing act, the finally announced the winners, with Tamad Si Juan being the Champion and BGM getting the people's choice award. In the end, our bet did not win, but that's just how every contest goes. I just hope that just like us there were other people that becomes a new fan of their music and able to widen their fanbase.
And that was basically how the 2025 Muziklaban has concluded, aside from few people losing their belongings, it was overall another successful even with no major incidents taking place.
Anyways, whenever you are going to an event where drinking is a huge part of the event, always practice drinking in moderation and only drink when you are in the legal age.
That was it for me. Thank you for reading my post, and see you on the next one.