Tiamat-Headlined Georgian Music Festival Shut Down By Religious Protesters
This weekend saw the Tbilisi JAM Festival go down this weekend–or almost did, until the event was cancelled by a group of religious protesters, who stopped the event thirty minutes in.
According to Georgia Today, a group of radical priests lead a mob of ultraconservative protestors to the festival site outside of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital city. According to festival organizer Vladimir Unanyants, the Christian protestors accused him of “organizing a mass sex orgy” and desecrating a nearby cemetery with the performance.
Ukranian band Jinjer made the following statement via their Facebook:
The venue owner appears to be the one who shut off power. The organizers are now looking for another location to hold the second day of the event.
Johan Edlund of Tiamat, who were headlining TJF, made the following statement to Blabbermouth:
“We landed in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, just today, quite late, or actually in the morning. Yesterday was the first day of a two-day festival that we were headlining. And that’s the biggest rock festival in Georgia.
“Yesterday, Orthodox monks attacked and closed down the festival, mainly because of us, Tiamat, because we had inverted crosses in our old logo type and I have written ‘Hail Satan’ on my chest.
“I told the promoter that they’re very welcome anytime to my hotel. I gave the hotel room, anything. Knock on the door, come here and we’ll discuss it and we’ll find a solution. Because I lived for eleven years in an Orthodox country, and after my father’s death, I tried to convert to Orthodox church myself. I’ve been there a billion times in the biggest Orthodox church that is my neighbor; I lived on their soil for ten years. And I didn’t see why this should happen, because we really come in peace. We just want the people here that want to go to a rock festival to be pleased and happy and to have a good time. So I don’t see why this should be a problem. But they haven’t replied. And the organizer now is trying to set up a club show at a place that we don’t know yet, because no one is allowed to know it until it happens. The monks are trying to find out what the organizers are trying to do in order to follow up on that, and it’s pretty fucked up.”
Good to know Georgia’s Orthodox Christians are taking on the really important issues, like music festivals. That’s what’s poisoning the world. Lord knows how many kids out there are buying Tiamat records.
Anyway, our condolences to everyone who wanted to have a good time at Tbilisi JAM Fest but couldn’t because a bunch of nutbars figure their magical sky dude is more concerned with metal music than he is with war, conquest, and suffering. Hopefully, they’ll be able to pull together a show where they aren’t set upon by the Georgian Inquisition.
