Worldwide Metal: Georgia
In this edition of Worldwide Metal, I travel to a country in-between Asia and Europe called Georgia. A country that has long history soaked with influences from everything from Russian, Greek & Roman Empires, Byzantine and Iranian empires. Developing a history that is unique to dive into in research. With so much unique influences in history and inspiration, does the country have any extreme metal acts worth checking out?
The first band I’ll be covering today is melodic black metal act Armazi. Formed in 2016, the band’s lyrical take on their homeland and culture adds a fascinating feeling to investigate their country’s history, lore and culture. With the band’s debut album Tale of False Humans and Warmasters released last year, delivers that demo-like production quality and musicianship from the peak acts of the second wave of black metal. Brash, harsh, and unholy musically. All while including folk instrumentation is a unique sound I dug alot with their debut album.
Now we add symphonic elements, along with folk and death metal with our next band Warsarius. With only one album, 2021’s Lullabies of Mountain Beasts, the album hits with the weight of melodic death metal, with the soaring strings and orchestral sections of Dimmu Borgir. I dug their record a lot and with the instrumentation of the orchestra sections, perfectly mixed with the chugging guitars and double bass. It was a standout out of the band’s I’ve checked out so far.
Mizarates is an instrumental progressive metal act from Tbilisi. A one man project helmed by Aleksey Mazur, the project delivers a groovy, bouncy but complex instrumental sound that has elements of djent and modern metal heaviness that mixes perfectly over the cascading guitars throughout the album. Though only one album, 2022’s The Portraits of It, the album is still a great instrumental record that scratches that itch for acts like Angel Vivaldi and Conquering Dystopia.
We dive into the technical death metal waters with the band Ritual Mortis. The band released their debut album Possessed by Machines in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and by God did that record hit like a ton of bricks. Punishingly heavy drumming, deep gutturals, and high-intensity guitars, it made fans of acts like Dying Fetus and Deeds of Flesh very happy to hear. A wrecking ball of a record, this is a band to keep an eye out and hope new music is on the way.
The last band I’ll be covering today is the depressive black metal act Kolkhetian. Created in 2020, during the world lockdown due to the pandemic, the band rose like a phoenix from the recovering quarantime with their debut album Miteveba in February 2023. Following that release up two months later with Catatonic Hebephrenia. The band’s most recent record No Life Expectancy continues the depressing and bleak nature of the genre, but does it with better production quality and a vocal performance that sounds unhinged and psychotic in nature. A true bleak picture of the darkness and unknown that awaits us at the end of the road as we head into the darkness.
That’s gonna do it for my time visiting Georgia. Did you dig some of the bands I featured in this edition? Were there any bands you think other readers should check out? Let us know in our comments section. You can also let me know what country I should travel to next, so I can stamp my metal passport on my journey to discover Worldwide Metal.
