I’ve been told that the “Armenian Metallica,” Vostan Hayots, are back together for at least a few gigs and will perform at Yerevan’s Rocking Club, formerly Downtown / Subway, on Friday 20 October. They apparently played at Stop Club last Friday, but I unfortunately found out too late to go. Anyway, this is really great news because everytime I’m at Downtown with foreign guests I always push Hovhannes Kourghinyan, the Club’s owner and Vostan Hayot’s vocalist, to perform some of their old numbers with his new band, Army of God.

I interviewed Kourghinyan in 2004 for a series of articles and photo stories on the rock scene in Armenia. That interview is available here.

In 1986, after serving in the Soviet Army for two years, we applied to open a theatre-studio. In the past, a theatre could only be opened on the order of the Soviet authorities because culture was considered very important for ideological reasons but as perestroika began, many changes started to occur on the level of art and culture. We opened the first self-financing theatre-studio called Nork in a building situated in Massiv and became well known. The first thing that we performed was based on the music of Vostan Hayots. In fact, the studio and Vostan Hayots were founded together.

The first musical we performed was a rock drama about the Genocide which we started in 1987. It took six months to complete and when it was finished, we performed it, accompanied by dancers, in all the large cities of Armenia. We also recorded our first album, Wake up my Son, so we can really consider that Vostan Hayots was founded at this time. Areg Nazaryan was on bass, Varouzhan Oughourlyan who is now in the United States was on lead guitar, there was Varouzhan Galustyan, Mikhail Babayan on keyboards and I was on vocals. However, we’ve always had problems with drummers and I think that most other groups experience the same thing.

[…]

In 1996, Vahe Khachatryan and a young guitarist, David Musheghyan joined the group and with their appearance the sound and musical expression of the band became deeper. David was a big fan of Metallica and brought that sound and those riffs with him. Before that, we had been described as the Armenian Pink Floyd although our second album, Cimera, was very nationally orientated in terms of exploring the inner life, complexes and problems of every Armenian. There’s a song about emigration, for example, and one about religion.

This was the best time for the group because David came. He was from the conservatory and brought a new style of song-writing to the group. Up until then, Areg Nazaryan had been the main composer of the group.

Anyway, given the monotony of nearly always hearing rock covers being performed by local bands, it’s great to hear these old songs from the 90s and always the audience goes wild. From what I’ve heard they really were a magnificent band and their material sung in Armenian representative of what can really be called “Armenian Rock.” A waiter at Downtown as well as several other rock fans and musicians have confirmed this gig, but I’ll try to confirm again in the comments section of this post if possible.

If they are back together and are performing on Friday, it’s not to be missed. Two mp3s of Vostan Hayots old material are available here.