Every metalhead is going to remember where they were during Black Sabbath’s farewell show. For each person that saw the star-studded Back To The Beginning play out before them at Villa Park, there were more than a hundred glued to a TV watching the livestream, and probably another thousand seeing social media explode with every update in real time. As for me, I was 2,000 miles away, experiencing a different kind of British heavy metal milestone.
Because I have the greatest sense of timing in history, I scheduled a holiday to Istanbul on Black Sabbath weekend, and I decided to be a tourist by day, mosher by night. On the Saturday I saw Scottish groove metal brutes Bleed From Within play their first-ever date in Turkey yet be greeted like returning heroes. 10,000 people at the Headbangers Weekend festival moshed for an hour nonstop and sang along, in a country where only 17 percent of the population knows English.
