Big expectations, big promises and big bands. The preliminary adjustment for the concert organized by Tangra Mega Rock Online Radio on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the leading metal label Nuclear Blast was built around these factors. Now fulfilled and a bit overlooked due to various subjective and impartial reasons, the festival was a really grand happening to the Bulgarian metal fans. Six bands that completely deserved every single applause, and about three thousand people who deserved every single moment of this great concert.

The musical variety of the performers guaranteed also a colour among the crowd. Heavy metal fans with motley t-shirts, death metallers with blooded looks and bushy hairs, gothic ladies with tons of plaster on the facades, gapers and devoted concert visitors. No matter what everyone had come to see and if they liked the bands except “their ones” or not, at the exit around midnight there could be heard only shouts of contentedness and husky cheers.

With a delay of half an hour of the preliminary circulating program, the first groups of savaged fans were allowed inside from the foyer of the Winter Palace. A few minutes later, when Amorphis finished with the promised signing session with all the fans who wished to take an autograph, Overdawn from the Bulgarian town of Ruse took over the stage with zip and desire appropriate for a debut in front a wide audience. And in spite of the fact that they were the only band whose style was totally different from the mass taste, few hundred people in front of the stage accepted more than well the hysteric modern metal of the four guys. The vocals of Ivo seemed like they didn’t depend on his jumping and banging, and the five songs were screamed with enviable passion before he introduced the next native band for the evening...

In fact, The Revenge Project do not need introduction. Bulgarian extreme metal fans know very well the high quality of the Burgas-based band, and soon the increased crowd was yelling in choir the anthems “Anger to Dwell” and “Unreal Is My Trip”.

A bitВ longer pause followed, before around 5:40 p.m. the first guests from abroad - Agathodaimon - thickened the darkness in the hearts and souls with 50 minutes of speeding yet atmospheric black metal. The Germans accentuated on songs from their latest two albums and presented to the Bulgarian audience the new fulfillments - one on the microphone and one on guitar. Obviously, the change is for good, because a couple of lasses mentioned with a sigh the hotness of the new throat Jonas Iscariot. Except with charm, he also impressed with his tough yells and high black metal screams, as ifВ he was chasing away everything holy out of the hall.

Exactly at 6:30 p.m. Agathodaimon bowed for goodbye, and the next pause followed, filled with the riffing punches of Dimebag Darrel, beer forВ half a EuroВ and the tiring wait for the free WCs to be let. Some more curious and observant spectators were amazed to notice the walks among the crowd of an unannounced guest of the happening: Billy Gould of Faith No More was wandering around with a tiny smile and hands in pockets...

Shortly before 7 p.m. the beasts Benediction jumped on stage and rushed in the most brutal part of the concert. Classic, uncompromising death metal, with some songs as old as the celebrating company itself. A hell of aggressive music, very stable performance and extremely warm attitude to the Bulgarian audience. On both sides of the band's logo in the back there were two flags – the British and the Bulgarian one. Dave Hunt thanked more than once to the amazing crowd in front of him, which was responding with raised fists and bloody moshing. During the one-hour show of the British there comes a moment when you cannot pick out the next brutal sonar fistcuff that throws on you with the malice of a wild bulldog, but, let's face it, after the first kicks in the head with a heavy warshoe you stop distinguishing the separate kicks as well, right? And the underground leaders were leaving and staying for the next “last song” a few times. When they were sent off with a storm of applause it was already almost 8 p.m., and the two big names on the bill were yet to come...

Half an hour to recharge and fight for better positions, the lights went out and suddenly the voice of Tobias Sammet sounded: “Welcome to the freakshow!” Yes, the joy was complete. Edguy are followers to the musical inheritance of their compatriots Helloween, which was heard more than once in the joyful and cheerful heavy metal hymns, bearing the spirit of the German wave of the genre. They walked through their full discography with bright mood, frequent irony, addressed mostly to drummer Felix, and never-ending gratitude and praise (absolutely deserved) to the Bulgarian audience. “Sacrifice”, “Catch of the Century”, “Save Me”, “King of Fools” and the heavy “Mysteria” marked Edguy's standard set, along the joke with a “very talented band that will certainly become famous one day” and the fired first verse of “The Trooper”; the continuous clownery of Tobi and the smiles on the fans' faces. The performance of the German “superheroes” ended with the emblematic “Avantasia”.

And so, in laugh and jokes and a few warcries from the merrily drunk Tangra Mega Rock bossВ Vassil Varbanov from the stage, the time passed to 10 in the evening, when - after the next dose of Pantera from the loudspeakers -В the throngs of spectators flowed to the playground in wait of Amorphis...

It is very hard to describe all the power, might and killing music that run from the Finns live. Amorphis got out and directly threw us in the great “Leaves Scars” off their former album “Eclipse” (2006), and we were watching confused the unique Tomi Joutsen before we reacted and charged ahead in a three-thousand-headed jumping mass of fists, hair and screams. Tomi is definitely the best thing that has happened to the band in many years. Energetic, talented, devoted, full of enthusiasm for himself and everyone that is watching him; he is one of the most emblematic frontmen that anyone could imagine. Vivid appearance complemented with one meter long dreadlocks and insanely profound growls that hit you so strong that you do not feel how you have strained your own vocal chords in a doomed attempt to outshout the loudspeakers...

...and Tomi Koivusaari and the rest of the band gave us a full bouquet of classic cuts (damn, “Against Widows” live!) dressed with peak moments of the latest two albums of the band. “The Smoke”, “House of Sleep”, “Towards and Against” and “Silent Waters” were as loudly applauded as the eternal “My Kantele”, “Into Hiding” and “Cast Away”. The Finnish made a kind of a reverence to our audience and played four full songs from the favorite to the Bulgarian AmorFans “Tales from the Thousand Lakes” (1994).

Amorphis let nobody uninvolved. Nobody! There wasn’t a single place in the crowd without a wood of hands lifted and people screaming, clapping with hands and jumping. No matter whether the band was playing “Two Moons” or the beautiful “Alone”, the magic was everywhere. They finished us with “Black Winter Day”... No comment!

Report:В Ivaylo AlexandrowВ / Tangra Mega Rock

Photos:В Nicki VassilevВ / Tangra Mega Rock

MoreВ PHOTOSВ are available in theВ GALLERY.