The Molí Rocks returns, the Ibizan 'metalhead' anomaly
The Sant Antoni festival constitutes a kind of heavy 'Gallic village' in the midst of the hegemony of electronic dance music
IbizaEl Molí Rocks is not what a tourist expects from Ibiza. The setting, in effect, is postcard-perfect: the Molí point, in the bay of Sant Antoni de Portmany, an idyllic place for the longest day of the year – the festival takes place on June 20th. But the music is not chill at all. If the hardest thing you've ever heard in your life is an Aerosmith ballad, this might take you by surprise. The audience at Molí Rocks also doesn't resemble the average clubber or tourist at all; they tend to wear black, have long hair, and wear t-shirts with names as optimistic as Sepultura, Black Sabbath, and Megadeth. The audience reacts to the music in two ways: either they headbang (shake their heads up and down to the rhythm of the music) or they pogo, a much more animated form of dancing than waltzing, common at rock or punk concerts, which consists – very briefly – of pushing each other in a group.
“I've sprained myself a couple of times in the pogo,” admits Pablo Kiaro, one of the organizers of Molí Rocks, vocalist of the Ibizan trash metal band Apotropaico. Kiaro and other Ibiza residents have promoted the Ibiza Rockers association, which, in addition to Molí Rocks, also organizes the Can Rock Festival, both with a marked underground and independent spirit. Naturally, participation in a pogo is completely voluntary – if you don't want dust, don't go to the threshing floor. “Metal is very stigmatized,” laments Pablo Kiaro. “But it’s a totally inclusive music and atmosphere; people of all ages come, some came with their parents to the first edition and now they come on their own; sometimes even a tourist who was passing by joins in.” Indeed, the Molí point is at the end of the promenade of the Portmany bay; it’s easy that if you’re sightseeing in Sant Antoni, you’ll arrive there while walking and stumble upon such an unexpected musical proposal as this.
The bulk of the Molí Rocks festival lineup is made up of Pitiusan bands: Badak, Meteorum, Mind of Storm, and Face the Maybe from Ibiza, and SUR from Formentera – it's the first time a band from Formentera has participated in the festival –; no one would say we are on the island par excellence for dance music. The lineup is topped by Terminal Violence from Barcelona and House of Dawn from Murcia, and completed by Main Line 10 from Mallorca. Eight bands in total and many hours of maximum decibels starting at 6 p.m. "We are very excited to play in Ibiza," assures San Caldentey, one of the guitarists of the band Main Line 10. "The truth is that we often find it easier to play outside than in the Balearic Islands, and we had never been to Ibiza before."
and independent. Naturally, participation in a Everything except black metal
What Main Line 10 does is melodic hardcore, meaning fast and aggressive tempos combined with intense melodic parts. “They’ve told us we’re like Green Day on steroids,” explains the band’s guitarist. We’re in the territory of labels. The metal and punk niche is divided, subdivided, and remixed into dozens of musical labels. “At Molí Rocks, we program everything, always with an independent spirit,” explains Pablo Kiaro. Indeed, on the lineup, you’ll find trash metal, progressive metal, and American rock. “The only thing we haven’t programmed yet is black metal,” states Kiaro, a subgenre that sometimes includes anti-Christian or satanic references and can be controversial. “Molí Rocks is organized with the support of the Sant Antoni Town Hall, and we want to maintain an open spirit for everyone so that no one can feel offended.”
The fourth edition of Molí Rocks invites you to taste the more alternative and harder side of rock music. And to do a bit of pogo, why not. If you do, you can be sure someone will help you up. Pogo is pretty much the opposite of what people do today in a club: recording themselves with the DJ in the background; don’t try to record anything while you’re in a pogo. Just try not to fall. Researchers at Cornell University in the United States applied mathematical models to this form of dance; they determined that, within a pogo, people stop behaving as individuals and start behaving like particles. That is, like a gas. Bumping into each other. Be gas, my friend. Wasn’t that what Bruce Lee said?
