The Bulgarian festival Chaiki Fest in Asparuhovo, Varna, was a pleasant surprise at the end of summer through the participating bands.

Flippy Don Dadda has opened the festival. The artist is from Sofia, Bulgaria, and his musical style is a mixture of grime, garage, DnB, rap, trap, dancehall, reggaeton, beat, psychedelic, and bassline. He is an artist, singer, and composer, and also an organizer, cameraman, and video editor.

Grizzly is a groove metal band from Varna, Bulgaria, formed in the beginning of 2017. They recorded their first single, “Headstrong”, and they had a tour together with AXEZ, also from Bulgaria. They have participated in Varna’s festivals, such as Fun City+ in 2017, Rockschool Fest in 2017 and 2018, and Extreme Summer Festival in 2019, 2020, and 2022.

Al ‘York is a band from Turkey. Their music is an underground rock with an Eastern sound. They literally blew the crowd away with their incredible live performance, technical playing, and stage presence. All three members of the band have vocal parts along with their instrumental parts.

The other special guests were Šarena Pojava. They play post-punk with Balkan sounds. The Croatian band is also famous as Multicolored Phenomenon. Their sound of solid rock, grunge, and punk heated up the atmosphere, and the people started making circular pits and crowd surfing.

The last band for the evening was the Bulgarian band Gigashadow. They are an audio-visual project with industrial electronic rock and metal sounds. Their heavy industrial metal sound, combined with dance, hip hop, rock, and DnB elements, is a mixture that they called Electrock. Their first singles, “War Teacher” and “Zombie”, were released at the end of 2020. The song “War Teacher” becomes a monthly winner in “Reynaers Rock Springboard” and enters the “Reynears Top 30” chart on Z Rock radio. In 2022 they released two new singles, “Party” and “Can’t Stand No More”. In the summer of 2022, they took part in “Extreme Summer Fest”, Varna city. At the end of 2024, they announced their debut album “Gigashadow”. The musicians have performed at Hills Of Rock 2024 in Sofia. Their show with a dancer, three masked male vocalists and one female vocalist, and two percussionists created an unforgettable atmosphere and was an epic final of the festival.

Chaiki Fest is created from entusiasts that gave to alternative underground bands a space to show their interesting sound. The festival was provided for a third time this year. It was funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU under the slogan “Musical Bridges to Europe”. The symbol of the Chaika (a Slavic word for a seagull) was created by the sculptor Petar Velinov BULGARASA. During the festival time were projected short movies about him, about the painter Victor Petkov, and about children from dRum Art Workshop.