Kavarna Rock Fest (until 2010 known as Kaliakra Rock Fest) is a small festival which is annually held near the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria. Obviously, it is well known among the Bulgarian audience with its rich history of prominent names like Motorhead, Slayer, Kreator, Arch Enemy, Korpiklaani, Annihilator… even Manowar established a Guinness record by continuously playing 5 hours in this rock capital back in 2008! However, the maintenance of this 11th edition was not certain until the last moment due to the change of local authorities and perhaps that was the reason for the lower attendance in comparison with previous years.

 

The very first day

Second day of July, the clock ticks 6 times and the sun wakes up. Got off the bus hugging my sleeping bag, looked around and hey, it’s Kavarna finally! At first glance, with its industrial zone and half decayed facilities Kavarna feels like a real ghost town. However, this feeling fades as you approach to the Kaliakra stadium and you come across a sight of early campers and stands preparing to offer their best unofficial merchandise and pancakes. Few hours before the festival, I had a chance to explore the surrounding area. The camping area was located right across the local graveyards and I thought: could it get more metal than brushing your teeth in front of a wall covered in obituaries?
Obviously, it could.

 

Around 17.00, the Romanian folk band E-AN-NA had the honor of opening the festival. The crowd curiously walked toward the sounds of whistles and bagpipes. This quintet sure did best to share the joy of being alive with their hits, for example, their rendition of the Romanian traditional folklore tune Tinca Popii.

 

After the short break, ODD CREW took over the role of heating the atmosphere with the sludge metal sounds of their recent album “Mark These Words”. The wounded hand of the bass player didn’t stop them from fulfilling their mission of 40 minutes long energy boosting.

 

Towards 19:00, Kavarna was shaken up by the German band VARG, coming out on stage covered in red paint and armed with powerful black/death noises inspired by Norse mythology and paganism. What was remarkable was that instead of intro, they played a part of the famous Charlie Chaplin’s “Dictator”, which expresses their anti-fascist and anti-racist positions. During their performance, they took some time to give free beer to the half-naked guy that was the only one brave enough to approach the stage and in the end, they invited the crowd to join their wolf pack (Varg = wolf in Swedish and Old Norwegian).

 

Next, the stage was getting ready for the penultimate band – the long – awaited THERION. Despite their theatrical performance and the amazing vocals of Chiara Malvestiti, I still felt like there was real passion missing. Linnea Vikstrom was all over the stage animating the audience, but her vocals remained less noticeable. Anyway, the crowd seemed to enjoy the older hits from Sitra Ahra and Lemuria.

 

AXEL RUDI PELL was wearing the crown this night. The show was an outstanding combination of hard rock noises and ballads, which culminated with “Rock the Nation”. Johnny Gioeli was constantly expressing love and tons of gratitude with heart-melting words: “Without you, there is no music, no me, no us.”

Approaching midnight, the show was over, but the party continued in the camp. Football fans had the chance to watch the semi-final of the UEFA Euro 2016, [Italy vs. Germany] on big screens.

I went back to my camp to gather all of the impressions of the first evening. So far, the organization was excellent: fast service, no rows for toilets, high level hygiene, and cheap beer (0,5l for 1 euro, even cheaper in the supermarket), maybe the only drag down was the fact that only one type of beer (Tuborg) was available at the main stage.