During lunch, Andy Schaf took to the stage wearing a bloodstained white robe and delivered a shocking surprise with her extraordinary scream. Athiria, who came from Austria, made sure everyone finished their food as quickly as possible so they could go to the stage for a show full of circle pits and songs with a nasty tone for rough, slow riffs and fast-paced death metal tremolo picking. They announced songs from their latest EP, ‘Bash of the Beast,’ which was released earlier this year. An album that made the group feel more at home in the genre and gave them a trademark sound. Singer Andy Schaf was also very open with the audience, despite her macabre appearance, humorously asking if everyone was still okay and hadn’t had too much to drink the night before. The band ended up being very grateful to the audience, who were already in the mood for them so early in the day, and wanted to enjoy the rest of the day and have a beer with the fans. That’s real showmanship!

For the first punk genre of the day, we start with Whiskey Ritual, who bring the warmth of northern Italy with them in a combo of hardcore genres, rough screams, and a great atmosphere. Their musical style is a very mixed bag, incorporating every element of a punk show you can think of. This is mixed with occasional metal parts and bizarrely good screams from Dorian Bones, who, together with the other band members, shows how much they can vary in the scene with their EP ‘Still Scum,’ which was released on 21 March. You are guaranteed a mishmash of new and old. People coming on stage, busy intense mosh pits, and lots of spilled beer. That’s the perfect way to describe Whiskey Ritual.

From Italy, we return to our neighbors in the north! Dutch duo Peter van Elderen and Marcin Hurkmans, who form the group TankZilla, lay down catchy western riffs that make you vibrate with the distortion of the guitar in combination with slow nasty riffs, giving the audience a collective headbanging session. No one cared that it started raining; people kept coming to hear these two play their grungy new rock and roll sound. They gave a successful new sound to classic heavy metal songs to keep people upbeat, with a crunchy voice in the vocals. Perhaps soft for fans of faster and more brutal music, but there’s no denying that TankZilla dominated the beach stage with style. and it’s definitely a great warm-up for the intense events that follow with Party Cannon‘s set in the rain.

With a slow, dirty intro, Dopethrone took to the stage to introduce their classic sludge/stoner doom with a new twist. For a band whose name refers to Electric Wizard‘s iconic album, you could imagine even before the group started that this was going to be a throwback to the iconic years of this particular genre. Despite the rain and grey skies, everyone is breaking their necks to the ultimate headbangers of the slower riffs that balance with the adrenaline-filled drums. But what makes this band stand out is the extreme sound of the bass that you feel throughout your entire body—pure ecstasy! Even after drinking so much Jägermeister, these Canadians warm us up in the cold weather by playing explosively on the main stage without a single flaw.

Evil face paint, a banner in the style of artist Gustave Doré, and lightning and rain in the background combine with a cult-like opening and fire blasting from the stage. Rotting Christ made the final show so epic that it cannot be compared to other days or acts. These Greeks have made black metal so unique and given it a different flavor that no one else can pull off anything of the same nature. Cups flew from one side to the other, and the mosh pits really looked like a satanic cult dancing around a campfire. The band also gave a good mix of songs of every caliber and malice. That made the atmosphere go in every direction, both calm and fast-paced aggression. Which is very unique to do in the black metal scene. There was not a moment when people were not crowd surfing, even during the interludes, and at the end, the atmosphere remained so fiery that it was hard to believe this was the finale of day three.