We’re Merningen, a band from Marling, South Tyrol, with a unique style between classic, hard and symphonic Rock. We create original songs and cover any music we like.
Lineup
Tobias Schwarz
Rhythm or lead guitar, he’s a wizard on the six strings. His solo parts touch your soul and your ears (Marshall sponsorship pending).
Favourite Merningen Song: Solitude
Emil Mair
He’s always cooking with the pots and pans on his drum set. His fills are on time, but his arrival to rehearsals is absolutely not.
Favourite Merningen Song: Edge of the Abyss
Noè Bignozzi
He’s our poster boy and is not pulling punches behind the microphone. Allegedly just in the band in hope of a future Takanaka feature.
Favourite Merningen Song: Erlkönig
Katharina Pezzei
The bassline she can’t pull off has yet to be discovered – She has groove and a trusted supply of snacks during rehearsal.
Favourite Merningen Song: Rough & Tough
Benjamin Settili
He’s the man behind knobs, sliders, cables and lenses, and he’s saving our asses left and right at every live gig.
Favourite Merningen Song: Solitude
Story
The wheels started turning on a summer evening back in 2022. Tobias, a drummer turned guitarist, convinced Emil, which he knew from previous percussion endeavors, to set up a jam session. The first song we ever played was War Pigs by Black Sabbath. Quickly we got Emil’s then-classmate Noè on board, a trained violinist who only recently picked up the bass.
Pictures from one of our first rehersals
After friend Katharina joined us for vocals later that year, we went on to record a semi-successful cover of a popular christmas song, and worked on original tunes that we would only finish years later. Noè switched to the microphone after Katharina left the band due to time constraints. In february of 2023 we recorded and released our first demo “Edge of the Abyss”.
Creating “Edge of the Abyss”
As the position of the bass player was vacant again, we recruited friend Lorenz, completing the lineup for our first gig, a private class reunion, and our first public gig, an evening at the JUX Gaudi Bar in August 2023. We ended the year with our first big appearance at the christmas special of the Stromkeller concert series.
Live gigs of ’23
On the creative side of things, we didn’t hold back either – releasing three demos (“The Man”, “Dynamite Heart”, “Behind the Sunset”) in the months of August, September and October.
In 2024, we took on our first graduation party, working with Benjamin for the first time and subsequently getting him to join us as a full-on member during our little summer tour around youth centers in South Tyrol, namely Meran, Eppan and Lana. There, we played our new songs “Solitude” and “To Kill or To Be Killed” for the first time ever.
Lineup of the 2024 summer tour
In spring of 2024 we also dropped a fourth demo track, “Rough & Tough”, with higher production quality. As Lorenz left town to study abroad, and multiple gigs were coming up, Merningen was in need of a bass player yet again. Coincidentally, Katharina had in the meantime picked up the bass for quite some time and reunited with the band. Winter of ’24/’25 saw us playing at a Halloween party and a Christmas party, and also entertaining two graduation parties.
Winter of ’24
In 2025 we hit the studio for the first time. Recording our single “Solitude”, a track we had essentially done and dusted for a nearly a year at this point. It was an awesome experience working with Martin at SoundRevoltStudio Terlan, and plans were made to follow up “Solitude” with and EP, and eventually an Album.
Recording ‘Solitude’ at SoundRevoltStudio
Then, we were bold enough to announce what we called our “Spring Tour”, with four lovely open-air concerts over the span of two months filled with mostly original music. We played a super fun set at the Street Food Festival Lana on the 2nd of May, had our first home-field advantage playing at the Kulturtage Marling, hit the legendary Open Air Gaul stage in Lana (that’s one item off our bucket list) and finished on June 7th at the Etschside Open Air in Naturns.
Lineup of the 2025 Spring Tour
This was our first time playing mostly original songs since Lorenz left, and we came prepared: The spring tour had us using backing tracks with an awesome orchestra-sound for the first time and notably improved the listening experience.
After a quick summer break we concluded the original music season with two gigs in August and September, returning to Jungle Meran for its Alternative Music Festival, and playing at Semirurali Social Rock Bolzano. Can’t have a Jungle-Gig without a premiere though: on the 9th of August we performed our song “Until We Meet Again” for the first time ever.
People
Not everyone on stage with us is a permanent part of Merningen (anymore) – but they deserve all the love as well. Here’s everyone we’ve had (and hopefully will have again) the pleasure of performing and working with.
Lorenz Hosp – Bass
Sara Mair – Vocals
Giosuè Mazzei – Production
Lukas Fleischmann – Keys
Maximilian Tribus – Keys
Aaron Kapfinger – Stagehand
Gabriel Unterweger – Stagehand
Max Ruedl – Stagehand
Bands
We love sharing our stage with other local performers!
Here are some of them:
The Modern Flowers
Bizzarro Welt
Criminal Beasts
Jakob Geier
Kaiser Lee
Tasty Drops
Dark and Stormy
The Straight Flash
Robins Huat
But Beautiful
Blind Apex
Diplomatics
Appetizers
Dubiose Symbiose
Strappi ai Piatti
Le Iene
Blink ’99
The Cloverhearts
Bierbabes
The Bad Bastards
Royal Breasts