Mar 29, 2014

Tbilisi Blitzkrieg — W.O.A. Metal Battle Caucasus

Tbilisi Blitzkrieg — W.O.A. Metal Battle Caucasus, Tbilisi, Georgia
© Onnik James Krikorian 2014

Last week saw bands from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia compete in the semi-finals of a Metal Battle Caucasus to determine which three bands would perform at the final next month. The winner will get to perform at the Wacken Open Air Festival to be held later this year in Germany.

Wacken Open Air (W:O:A) is a summer open air heavy metal music festival. It takes place annually in the small village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany. With 80,000 festival visitors, and including personnel a total of roughly 86,000 attendees in 2011, it attracts all kinds of metal music fans, such as fans of black metal, death metal, power metal, thrash metal, gothic metal, folk metal, and even metalcore, nu metal and hard rock from around the world.

Naturally, because of unresolved conflict in the region, such a competition — a rare occasion where bands from all three countries can perform on the same stage — could only be held in Tbilisi, Georgia. Organiser Eric Hutchence told me a little about the event (in Russian):

onewmphoto · Tbilisi Blitzkrieg Organiser Eric Hutchence

Anyway, some more pics from the two-day event below. Special thanks to Eric Hutchence and Arsen Hakobyan who alerted me to the event literally 10 minutes it was due to start. The competition has a Facebook page here and my BBC Azeri audio slideshow is here.

More photos are available on my Facebook Page.

Tbilisoba 2024

Oct 17, 2024

Earlier this month, Tbilisi celebrated Tbilisoba, the city’s annual harvest festival. Over the years it has changed significantly and seems smaller than before. I first covered the event in 2011 but the best so far remains 2014 when there was more representation of traditional Georgian folk dance and music as well as by ethnic minorities such as the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities. This year, that was held relatively far away from Tbilisi’s Old Town and Rike Park with very little publicity or in some media any at all. Nonetheless, those that attended appeared to enjoy themselves sufficiently and I managed to photo stories.

Can Armenia and Azerbaijan finally reach an agreement by COP29?

Oct 17, 2024

As this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku draws closer, negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan appear to be drifting further apart. Despite hopes that the opposite would be true, a lack of clarity and confusion instead continues to reign. Does the draft Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations contain 17 points or 16? Initially, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had announced that consensus had been reached on 13 points while 3 were partially agreed and there was no agreement at all on a fourth.