Pentagram

Human Hurricane (Downtime)
by Martin Popoff

Alright mopheads, the story is now told at prices we can afford. Pentagram are one of the original doom acts in the world, feedbacking their way around the lowest ladder rungs from 1971 to 1976, remaining relatively unknown because all they had was a grab-bag of singles. First of four proper studio albums came in ’85, but this great package compiles all the early singles plus demos and other rarities (all 1973-1976) so we can finally witness the majesty of Pentagram. Well, not quite majesty. There’s a reason Sabbath got famous and nobody else did. But this is as heavy, and actually heavier than most of the “elses” – those being Sir Lord Baltimore, Blue Cheer, Bang, and a bunch of others people claim exist (and when you hear them from a metal point of view, the argument falls apart). Almost tapped for a right go ’round by the Krugman/Pearlman team (see the fantastic Cultsters), Pentagram cut through the fat and actually tried quite hard to be loud, sludge-filled metal, citing as their heroes Blue Cheer, but exceeding on that band’s promise at least in percentages. Plus these guys had a great vocalist in Bobby Liebling, who had one of those inhuman ’60s belts that worked with this America-difused, Detroit-dated, Amboy-doofussed but otherwise Sabbath-wobbled material. Really proof that the metal bands you know were not alone in toiling away real scary-like. Seventeen tracks, and among them, quite a few forms of pre-metal mania ventured musingly, then discarded come 1976 for nine years of what?
(PO Box 424, 31 Adelaide St. East, Toronto, ON Canada M5C 2J5)