Yes, org-roam-bibtex combined with org-ref is great. You can search your reference materials with using “meta data” you maintain in .bib file (BibTeX data, synced with Zotero, for instance) – see the screen shot below for org-ref screen.
I am assuming this is what you mean by “track key pieces of bibliographical data” and “access/search by metadata”?
You might find useful the discussion we have had recently, and my humble diagram that illustrates how these different applications work together.