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Pentagram - Last Rites

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 March 7 2011 at 03:43:14 PM




Viaticum… Say what you will about the trajectory of Liebling and Pentagram, Last Rites proves drugs are good for you and essential for rock ‘n’ roll (one exception being the career of Angus Young). Yet Last Rites, Pentagram’s first full-length in seven years, succeeds in spite of the fact the band is allegedly clean. One reason is no one could write or perform this music without clocking sufficient past hours in establishments of ill repute. Then there is Victor Griffin’s return, whose axe is straight forward and up front as solid accompaniment to Liebling’s sinister drawl, a cohesiveness that has been mostly absent since Be Forewarned. Production is thick, but not over-cooked. Two complete gems, “Walk in the Blue Light” and “Everything’s Turning to Night” get dusted off and given updated treatment. Follow the links to an inevitable chain that makes up every Pentagram release: the best material here, which is the majority of songs, was written years ago, when both singer and guitarist were still on a strict regimen of good ol’ fashioned substance abuse, riding the hot rails to hell with goat of mendes at the wheel.

Baphomet’s bidding was born for burning in 1971 with a guitar sound that would become indebted to Master of Reality; Pentagram are commonly tagged as America’s answer to Sabbath and too often pointed at as originators of “stoner rock”; their best stuff is closer to the wicked blues nearly perfected on Danzig’s first two. Witchfinder General are touted as contemporaries, but Pentagram are more reptilian. An alternate universe that should’ve seen Joanne Latham tits out in a wrecked room, drawn curtains, bruised arms, stabbing the ashtray, “Burning Savior” on the tape machine “…no doubts you were born to burn; no one chooses the right hand turn…” In some way they’re inheritors to Blue Cheer’s mantle, but with an even further step from dark psychedelia and into narcoticized rock via Bobby Liebling’s personal hell as serpentine villain in leather, issuing dark warnings about making wrong choices while making every wrong one himself on the way to infamy. Some reports have him allegedly writing 30 albums worth of material in the early ‘70s alone. Faustian bargain signed in blood? Liebling believed it when he belted out “Lucifer lives it’s no illusion…” The truth is probably less mystical. A prolific talent handicapped by heroin, prison, fallouts with friends (most notably Joe Hasselvander), a backstage overdose, a revolving door of band members. Then about four years ago, for reasons that can be alternately attributed to marrying and successfully knocking up a babe 25 years younger and/or finding some kind of spiritual renaissance, Liebling pulled himself together and out of his mom’s basement to re-emerge, zombie-like, but only moderately drug fucked and in possession of vox still capable of raising chills up the spine.

The band would probably deny it, but it is doubtful Last Rites would be half as interesting were it not for the echoing magic of this misspent youth. These guys can reject evil influences and poison pills, follow a so-called higher calling, even take up knitting—the ghosts of the past seep through and haunt the present. Last Rites weaves a tenuous rope between here and the grave—a flailing attempt at remaining brutal it is not. With any luck there is a deep well of old Liebling songs still out there. Certain wealthier and more famous musicians grasping at the notoriously double-edged sword of “cleaning up” could benefit from a similar pit in their own backyard.

[Adam Ganderson]

Pentagram
Last Rites
2011
Metal Blade

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Comments (1)

  • 31 comments
    David
    1:46 PM on Mar 09, 2011 // reply »
    Glad somebody's heard this...

    Definitely more influenced by Cheer (and 60's garage) than Sab, but also heavily indebted to the Groundhogs, they were probably the only American band at the time unafraid to marry those elements with some Detroit-Stooges/MC5, and make it scary like Coop.

    Very few bands ever had the good taste and talent to do that, do it originally, and do it well. The fact they they were almost lost in obscurity forever is more a testament to the effects of drug abuse, than the inspiration from said drugs probably was. These guys should have been way more popular.

    I do hope this new album is good.
 

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