I was coming to the end of my time in Antalya and as Roar was a Heavy Metal fan and Pentagram were playing in Antalya then I had to go for one last bender.

Pentagram are the band that BUILT heavy metal in Turkey. Formed in Istanbul in 1986, they played their first gig at a wedding hall where the audience destroyed most of the chairs and tables before they finished their fifth song. Turkey was meeting metal for the first time, and it went exactly how you’d hope.

By the time I saw them in Antalya in 2018, they had been going for over thirty years. Their guitarist Ümit Yılbar was killed by terrorists while serving in the Turkish army in 1993. They wrote “Fly Forever” in his memory and kept going. Their guitarist Demir Demirkan went on to write the first Turkish song to ever win Eurovision. Their bassist Tarkan Gözübüyük produced albums for some of the biggest names in Turkish rock. They’ve released records on Century Media and Nuclear Blast. Outside Turkey they go by Mezarkabul because an American doom metal band already had the Pentagram name.

What makes them special is the sound. This isn’t metal copying what came out of LA or Birmingham. They weave Anatolian folk music through heavy riffs and progressive arrangements in a way that is completely their own. By 2017 they had reunited past members for an acoustic album and were playing live as a seven or eight piece, mixing electric and acoustic instruments.