Pentagram Tickets

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.