Day two of the Kavarna mayhem shall be long remembered as a feast of loud decibels and loose alcoholic passions. Hours before Motörhead took the stage, the loaded hordes of bikers from all over Bulgaria began to fill in the parking lots around the festival camp amidst clouds of dust and dirt. They added to the people who already warmed up with Heaven & Hell last night, summing up a considerably great number of punters for the traditional summer Kaliakra Rock Fest.

Good old Motörhead classics were booming in the early noon from the festival tents offering food and drinks. Symbolic for all things honest and cynical in rock’n’roll, Motörhead are here for the second time after they destroyed Sofia instead of Iron Maiden some 7 years ago.

Legendary and cult-like, this band deserved support acts (in this case – SJK and Granulom) which could do better than the painfully familiar “Are you ready to meet Lemmy?” and the irrelevant “C’mon now, everybody who feels heavy metal inside their hearts, kneel down like I do…” Put aside the fact that merely no one bothered to do needless shit like kneeling on the grass, but people were having great fun taking the piss either by copying Halford-like shrieks of the SJK vocalist or by posing clichéd heavy metal figures. A couple of drunken men was practicing classic dancing, and two lesbians were performing some show only few meters from us until a dozen of camera flashes turned what initially seemed a real passion into an attention seeking experience on the edge of sheer boredom.

Yet before 10 p.m. the whole D.I.Y. fun was over and the legendary British Motörhead took the stage by storm, immediately releasing a sound shock wave with a kilometer range. Average people, domestic animals and even insects, otherwise resistant to nuclear strikes, should have been dead by the first lines of “Dr. Rock”, but the beer-consuming and god-knows-what-else-in-the-veins audience was prepared and survived the attack; responded; applauded.

There came the apocalypse known only to the ones who had already been to a Motörhead gig. The trio did not emphasize on classics only, but proudly hit with newer stuff, then logically made their blast from the past for the loyal fans with “Killed by Death”, “Ace of Spades” and of course the Jurassic revelation called “Overkill”, which put the end of the evening.

The old boys didn’t stop for a second to take a breath nor to have a little rest. Most probably because they breathe and live for what they do. And they still do it better than all the rest. Mickey Dee performed a great drum solo and was proclaimed as “the best drummer in the world” by Lemmy Kilmister, and Phil Campbell was modestly and stubbornly producing guitar sounds that could easily take shapes of bulldozers. And those two even weren’t Motörhead members at the time this band recorded albums like “Iron Fist”, for example... but Campbel has been in Motörhead for 23 years now! And he doesn’t like to be called “the new guy”. And Lemmy… Lemmy was emotionally dry, which appears to be quite normal for his age and drinking habits, but instead of being just ambivalent, he was constantly mouthing thankyous with the manners typical for a decadent British nobleman. The audience, who felt the positive energy coming up from the stage, did not stop yelling and screaming for a single minute.

Motörhead showed us how to do it. Again. It’s not that important for them which town or country they’re in. They just arrive to show their mastery. The important thing is the chance to see them. Again.

Words: Stefan Jordanov.

Photos: Victor Alexandrov.

More photos are available in the GALLERY.