Arhangel

Arhangel is a Macedonian alternative rock band formed in 1989 by singer, guitarist and songwriter Risto Vrtev, the first singer of Mizar and a former member of Inola X. Their sound is muscular and melodic at once, recalling post-punk acts such as the Smiths and Ekaterina Velika, and their lyrics follow the political and cultural changes in Macedonia in the 1990s. They are counted among the best Macedonian bands of that decade.

Vrtev had written the song "Arhangel" as early as 1980, and several songs from his Mizar days, among them "Isus" and "Dva vo eden", went on to Arhangel. The band started with Vrtev, guitarist Dragan Ginovski and bassist Dejan Argirovski, and in its first year played the YURM festival in Zagreb and reached the final of the youth festival in Subotica.

Their debut, Arhangel, came out in Belgrade in March 1991, with bassist Petar Jankov and drummer Dimitar Dimovski, formerly of Cilindar. Editors of sixty rock magazines and radio shows named it the best debut album of the year, and "Arhangel", "Prevez" and "Molk" became its hits. The war that began soon after cancelled their Yugoslav tour.

Arhangel 2 followed in June 1993 on MRT's label, released on the Yugoslav market as Dno, and that year the band won Macedonian awards for best album, best concert, song of the year and best lyricist; they also took best live act in 1993 and 1994. In 1995 they played the T-festival in Skopje on a bill with the Prodigy, and their cover of Hüsker Dü's "Never Talking to You Again", dedicated to the late Dejan Argirovski, won best song and best video.

Heart Core (1998) closed the trilogy Vrtev had planned from the start, and its song "Über Makedonische" carried the soundtrack of the film Goodbye, 20th Century. Nebesna mašina followed in 2003, with "Vina nevina" among its best-known songs, and the live album Live in Skopje in 2004.

Arhangel have played abroad in Czechoslovakia, Denmark, at the EBU rock festival in Ljubljana and at Exit in Novi Sad in 2005. On 20 December 2013 the band gave a concert with the Macedonian Philharmonic in Skopje, and in 2016 they closed the eighteenth edition of the Taksirat festival. The line-up listed today is Risto Vrtev, Dragan Ginovski, Petar Jankov and drummer Panta Džambazoski.