Pentagram

Biography

You can try if you want – you wouldn’t be the first – but Pentagram are undeniable. More than 50 years on from the first incarnation of the band, through decades of tumult, hard wins and tough losses, the band has cast an influence across doom the likes of which few have ever attained, and as with Candlemass, or Saint Vitus, Trouble or any other ‘legendary’ name you want to drop, modern doom cannot not take the shape it has without them.

The singular presence of frontman Bobby Liebling has been the consistent driving factor keeping them going against odds, gods, and, sometimes, better judgment, and Pentagram’s history is known almost as much for drama and scandal, the comings and goings of members, sometimes acrimonious, as it is for classic songs like “All Your Sins,” “Be Forewarned” or “Forever My Queen.” In 2011, the documentary Last Days Here let Liebling tell part of the story, from the earliest demos to a flirtation with major-label stardom to the depths of addiction and obscurity. Unflinching and powerful, the film ended with a new incarnation of Pentagram on stage, reviving the band to a new generation of listeners hungry for what in the interim had become a classic, distinctive sound.

Pentagram’s most recent studio album was 2015’s Curious Volume, a follow-up to the record that started the resurgence, 2009’s Last Rites. Their catalog is replete with collected singles, different versions of LPs, and so on, but records like 1985’s Pentagram, 1987’s Day of Reckoning, the arrival of Relentless in 1993 or of the early-works compilation First Daze Here (The Vintage Collection) in 2002 are classics. They’ve inspired countless others not only in the band’s home in the Doom Capitol (Washington D.C./Maryland) region, but around the world, and ready definitions for the term ‘lifer’ are rarely so forthcoming. With a miles-long trail of burned bridges behind them, Pentagram may yet outlive us all.

The list of players who’ve helped shape this legacy is long, from guitarists like Geof O’Keefe (Macabre), Victor Griffin (Death Row, Place of Skulls) and Kelly Carmichael (Internal Void) to bassists like Kayt Vigil (Sonic Wolves), Adam Heinzmann (Internal Void, Foghound), and Greg Turley (Place of Skulls) and drummers like Gary Isom (Spirit Caravan, ex-Wretched), Joe Hasselvander (Raven, The Hounds of Hasselvander), Sean Saley (Satan’s Satyrs) and Pete Campbell (The Mighty Nimbus, Sixty Watt Shaman). That is a fraction of the full list. It is a family tree unmatched in doom, and it hasn’t always been pretty going from one incarnation of the band to the next, but anyone who’s ever counted them out or said, “oh that’s it they’re done,” has only thus far ever sounded foolish in hindsight.

It’s 2024 and Pentagram stand ready for another impossible comeback. A revamped lineup reads like a cast of ringers with guitarist/producer Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Big Scenic Nowhere) taking up six-string duties, Scooter Haslip (also Mos Generator) arriving on bass and Henry Vasquez (Saint Vitus, Legions of Doom, Blood of the Sun) atop the throne on drums, and their 10th studio album, Lightning in a Bottle, as a cause to once again take up arms and hit the road. Aligned with Italian label Heavy Psych Sounds, the album brings new ideas and perspectives while remaining true to Pentagram’s history in riffs and facebound groove.

The new material is delivered with due force, and in songs like “Lady Heroin,” “I Spoke to Death” and “I’ll Certainly See You in Hell,” there’s more than a little reconciliation happening as this version of Pentagram examine the long narrative of which they are now part. There’s no question that wherever the band go, chaos follows, and with Liebling as storyteller, the next controversy looms, but the lesson to take from more than five decades of Pentagram’s existence is that sometimes the mere existence of a thing can be an act of rebellion. Thus, Pentagram, defiant and perpetual.