A small selection of Sabbath Fans by Katja Ogrin taken at Download 2016
This year, the pioneers of all things Metal, Black Sabbath, announced it’s time to hang up their devil horns and call it a day. Before that happens though they’ve announced ‘The End’ tour which included a final UK festival appearance at Download 2016.
Following the success of the Home of Metal exhibition curated by Capsule in 2011, we thought it was important to mark the occasion by bringing back Home of Metal with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, Laney Amplification and TeamRock to document the most loyal fan base in the world.
Sabbath fans waiting for their portraits to be taken including Dig from Earache and Jonathan from Metal Hammer – photo by Nathan Cole
We took a team of volunteers to Download Festival to launch the project and document Sabbath fans by taking their portraits via a pop up photography studio. As the sun shone down, we pitched up and the queues grew as people were keen to share their devotion to Sabbath.
photo by Liz Catterall
After hundreds of photos, loads of laughs and plenty of chats it was time to pack up. Thankfully the famous British summer time weather reared it’s head just as we packed up the van.
some of our amazing Home of Metal volunteers getting ready to watch Sabbath
After a long day the Home of Metal team were rewarded by watching the mighty Black Sabbath say goodbye to Download forever. The clouds opened and unleashed what can open be described as a monsoon but thousands of people didn’t care, we were watching the greatest band to ever grace the Download stage, plus we had ponchos courtesy of the Festival’s press office so the heavy rain just added to the amazing atmosphere.
On behalf of the whole Home of Metal team, we wanted to say a massive thank you to Download Festival and TeamRock for all their support, we were made to feel very welcome and brilliantly looked after.
Above is a teeny tiny taster of the portraits we took, keep an eye on the fans page to see your lovely mug in all it’s glory in the next few days as we start to upload the photos.
Bill one of our long standing volunteers photo by Liz Catterall
Get involved
Watch this space, Home of Metal is back and there is loads going on behind the scenes and we want you to help take us forward.
Does free entry to events while learning new skills sound like fun to you? You’ll be an ambassador of ensuring Metal music is part of history and working towards documenting our regions musical culture.
To learn more about our range of volunteering opportunities email info[at]homeofmetal.com with ‘volunteer‘ in the subject and we’ll send you an application form.
Also if you have any Sabbath related artefacts/memories, contact us on the same email address with ‘archive‘ as the title and we’ll get back in touch with you or you can upload photos yourself to the archive, have a look to get an idea of what we are looking for.
It’s all for the riff and it’s time for you to join us.
Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.