If there was any justice in the world, Maryland-based doom rockers Pentagram would have put out at least one killer, well-produced hard rock album in the 1970's. Unfortunately, personnel issues, drug addiction and plain bad luck meant a record contract would forever elude them, spelling the group's demise in 1976.
Luckily, the band recorded a handful of singles and studio demos during its short existence. In 2001, Relapse Records used these hard-to-find recordings as the basis for the 2001 compilation, First Daze Here: The Vintage Collection, turning a new generation of metalheads on to the occult-infused heaviness of this pioneering outfit.
"Forever My Queen" is the perfect album opener, laying out the band's uncompromising agenda in less than two and a half minutes with a swinging drumbeat, an utterly massive riff and Bobby Liebling's eerie vocal. Guitarist Vincent McAllister makes a breathtaking first impression with his flailing, almost out-of-control speed-guitar breaks, and bassist Greg Mayne adds even more weight to the repetitive main riff with a chordal bassline.
The rest of the album follows suit, benefiting greatly from Liebling's unconventional songwriting and McAllister's white-hot guitar theatrics. But Pentagram is no one-trick pony -- "Review Your Choices" finds the group in a slow-and-moody Sabbath groove that positively oozes menace, while "Hurricane" and "Earth Flight" find the group ratcheting up the tempo and energy levels to near-Sir Lord Baltimore levels.
Perhaps the climax of the record is the six-minute "Last Days Here," an echoey warehouse recording in which a positively haunted-sounding Liebling pleads for salvation from hopelessness and despair. The second half of the song is an ever-building repetition of the main chord progression in which Liebling growing more harrowingly desperate through the song's cathartic ending. A true epic, and chock-full of genuine emotional resonance.
First Daze Here is proof that one of the best stories in rock never got a chance to happen. These recordings stand as a milestone in the untold history of heavy metal and are essential listening for those who like to dabble on the dark side of hard rock.
Postscript: Perhaps the only flaw with this compilation is the sequencing: these tracks come from various recording sessions and studios, so the sound quality may abruptly change from one song to the next. This could have been mitigated by grouping songs from the same session together in sequence. But this is a minor quibble -- frankly, we're lucky these recordings even still exist.
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