The Obelisk: Why do you think the appreciation for Pentagram has grown the way it has over the last decade?

Bobby Liebling: I can pinpoint it down to the people my age, who have grown up, have had children who are now 16 and over, and can attend Pentagram shows. Their parents turn them on to Pentagram. I’ve met hundreds of couples who brought their kids worldwide. Every country I’ve been to at least has had two or three couples bringing their children with them and have said, “I’ve been listening to Pentagram for 30 years, I want you to meet my son, he’s dying to meet you.” I’m covering a generation from 16 to 60.

Bobby Liebling

It’s definitely because of that influence, coupled with the fact that I am a dinosaur that made it through the ice age and the retro movement, and stoner rock movement, as they call it by coined phrase — I just say we play real, real, REAL heavy hard rock. I don’t call it heavy metal anymore. They still say “The godfathers of doom” when we come on stage, and it is downtrodden — I’ll put it that way — in mood. I write all minor stuff, bum outs (laughs). Pretty depressing, kill-yourself music, which a thousand people around the world has told me has saved their life, which blows my mind. Especially Sub-Basement, which is my absolute, hands-down baby, for production, and for the most sick, demented pile of songs. I can only listen to it once every two or three months. I absolutely can’t listen to it, it’s so entirely bummed out from first note to last (laughs). It’s very sick in the head. I call Show ‘em How the sister album to that album.

Show ‘em How is very clean production, and it redid some of the Pentagram classics like “20 Buck Spin,” as opposed to Sub-Basement, let’s say “Target,” is the typical Pentagram, bluesy-influence with Blue Cheer mixed into it, and on Show ‘em How, “Show ‘em How” is, the changes and a barrage of feedback at the end, uncontrolled like “Doctor Please” by Blue Cheer, but instead of all the dementia that’s on Sub-Basement, the other group of song moods on Show ‘em How, instead of demented, is sad.

It’s pathetic and sad and very close to my heart and toned down, dear to me. Like “If the Winds Would Change,” “Last Days Here,” it’s the only ballad Pentagram’s ever done, really. It’s a “Gimme Danger” I’ve-got-nothing, Iggy-type of thing. Up that alley, completely, compared to Keith Richards and Kurt Cobain in one article, which, my god, I couldn’t believe they’re putting me in that kind of company (laughs). Like, what’s wrong with this picture? I should be licking their balls (laughs).

“Last Days Here” — the first rehearsal version is on First Daze Here — when that came out, they said, “This guy Bobby Liebling sounds like he’s so truthfully depressed, and so honestly, totally suicidal that we wonder if 10 minutes after the recording session did he jump off the studio roof and commit suicide.” It’s the hopeless despair of it. There’s no glimmer of light anywhere in sight. Of course, Jim Osterberg being a close friend of mine for many years — I followed The Stooges in the early days — I met him by cleaning the peanut butter off his body in a bathroom in 1970 (laughs). …But I think it’s the retro movement, to answer your question.

Continue reading:  The Obelisk: Interview with Pentagram’s Bobby Liebling

Master Musicians of Bukkake - Totem One

Lovingly pinched from Obsidian Grave: Sun City Girls fans! Drone-doom freaks! Here’s your unlikely crossover dream come true, kind of. A psychedelically heavy (sometimes) and always eerily exotic new album on the Conspiracy label from this band with the wise ass faux-ethnic name .

Now including members of Earth and Burning Witch amongst their ranks, and once again boasting cameo appearances from folks belonging to the Sun City Girls and Secret Chiefs 3, this is exactly what we might have expected from this project. Acoustic ethnic instrument buzz and drone meets guitars-leaning-on-amps buzz and drone.

Continue reading: OBSIDIAN GRAVE: MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE -Totem One (Conspiracy).

Samsara Blues Experiment - Long Distance Trip

Lovingly pinched from The Obelisk: I can’t figure out why none of the myriad stoner indies out there has jumped on Berlin’s heavy psych rockers Samsara Blues Experiment. The German four-piece have recorded their first full-length, Long-Distance Trip, and sent it over for some preview-type listening, and especially coming off the heels of their two-song demo — which itself was nothing to scoff at — it’s got the kind of trance inducing stoner feel that one would think labels would be all over. Tee Pee? MeteorCity? Hell, even Elektrohasch (although that one might even be too obvious)? These guys toured the West Coast of the US on their own dime! Far worse has been signed for far less. Won’t someone give a quality band a home?

The two tracks from the demo, “Singata Mystic Queen” and “Double Freedom” show up here, the latter closing the album with a stunning 22-minute sprawl and the former serving as the opening movement. Samsara Blues Experiment, like Los Sounds de Krauts-era Colour Haze before them, are just beginning to explore where they can go with their jams, utilizing both heavy riffing and mellow noodling to establish a flow both within each track and one to the next.

Continue reading:  Pack Your Bags and Journey with Samsara Blues Experiment’s Long-Distance Trip | The Obelisk.
(Very special thanks to JJ Koczan for his kind permission)

Please do not send us requests to change bands around in order to accommodate personal preferences. The running order for the Afterburner was chosen with the utmost care and production logistics play a major role, too.

Running Order - Afterburner Sunday April 18th

OSC - Dead Man In Space

Lovingly piched from Ian Abrahams’ Spacerock Reviews: In the first category, since anything by them is always a treat to listen to, is a three-track limited edition vinyl of Oresund Space Collective’s Dead Man In Space release from late 2009 that OSC’s Scott Heller had very kindly sent me a CDR of for review.

In true OSC tradition, two tracks are long, improvisational and atmospheric numbers, very laid-back in a way and which the band suggests harkens back to their early material. “We enter the into the realm of jazz space rock with the track ‘Space Jazz Jam 2.2′ which features Anders on saxophone”,  they note, whilst the other, ‘High Pilots’ they describe as “taken from the last jam of the studio session and is a very dynamic and moody piece of music.” The final track is a brief spoken word piece, but the two main tracks are both a taster for a future full CD release of this jam session – always OSC’s favored and it has to be said, highly successful, methodology of working – but the limited edition vinyl run is also a tester for future vinyl releases.

Continue reading:  Spacerock Reviews: Oresund Space Collective – Dead Man In Space.

Iron Man - Black Night

Lovingly pinched from The Obelisk: If the elder’s fables are true, and there really is a cult of true doom, then I can’t help but feel that somewhere in the initiation process is Black Night, the 1992 debut offering from Maryland legends Iron Man. Among the most sought-after of the Hellhound Records catalog, it’s an album whose legacy has only grown with time. I don’t know if it’s a rite of passage or some kind of challenge to would-be cult inductees or what. Maybe you have to air guitar all of Al Morris III’s riffs while on fire or something. That would be cool in a very Beavis and Butt-Head kind of way.

Shadow Kingdom Records, whose reissue kung fu is like Bruce Lee in fast forward, capped off 2009 by re-releasing this rare doom gem, capturing the Iron Man lineup of Morris, Larry Brown (bass), Ron Kalimon (drums) and Rob Levey (vocals; also the man behind the Stoner Hands of Doom series of festivals) in their first incarnation after leaving behind their Black Sabbath cover band roots and trotting out their premiere batch of original material. With cuts like “Life After Death,” “Black Night,” “A Child’s Future” and classic album opener “Choices,” we can only be glad 18 years later that they did.

Continue reading: The Obelisk » Blog Archive » Iron Man’s Black Night Lives Again.
(Special thanks to JJ Koczan for his kind permission)

Spiritual Beggars

Spiritual Beggars’ last album, Demons, was released in Europe in June 2005 via InsideOut Music. The follow-up to 2002’s On Fire was recorded at Slaughterhouse Studio with Rickard Bengtsson and was mixed by Fredrik Nordström and Patrik J. Sten at Studio Fredman in Gothenburg, Sweden. Mastering duties were handled by Göran Finnberg. The album cover art was conceived by Niklas Sundin of Cabin Fever Media.

Gunslingers - Manifesto Zero

Praise for Gunslingers’ Manifesto Zero from San Francisco’s Aquarius Records: Now this is what we’re talkin’ about. The return of France’s Gunslingers, not too long after their amazing No More Invention album and the cd release of frontman Gregory Raimo’s equally awesome solo endeavor as GR & Full-Blown Expansion.

How does one go about describing a band like this? If you had to simplify things, you might call them a psychedelic punk band with krauty inclinations. It is also interesting to note that the rhythm section is comprised of dudes from black metal behemoths Diamatregon and weirdo occultic post rockers Aluk Todolo, not that this sounds anything like either. Gunslingers possess plenty of what we all know and love – crazy psych-surf riffing, a frantic rhythm section that manages to be both tight and sort of drunk sounding, and GR’s unhinged vocals, which we accurately described as a cross between Johnny Rotten and Mark E. Smith, or better yet, the Trashmen’s singer on the infamous “Surfing Bird”.
But the truth is, Gunslingers don’t fit so easily into any categories. They are a crazy sounding bunch, capable of whipping up songs that are frenzied and totally demented, but also catchy and fun. And unlike many bands attempting this type of thing, Gunslingers avoid falling into the “retro” category, sounding, if anything, more like the true extension of the wild sounds of the late ’60s  /early ’70s. So if this band HAD existed 40 years ago, you wouldn’t be too surprised, but Gunslingers sound so self-aware that they seem to exist out of time, a quality we always appreciate.

The band kicks in right away with “The Spectre’s Sinister Commandment,” a firebreathing number that lurches forward menacingly with awesome sounding bass, melodic riffing, and some ride heavy drumming as GR’s crazed vocals will make you wonder what the hell is going on in France these days. Without really letting up, Gunslingers go right into their strange world once again with “Coupe-George”, a dense hurricane of fucked up biker psych mayhem heavy on the treble.
“Stub Of Fortune” is another monster with super distorted guitars that seem to recall SST’s glory days, all twisted, atonal, and jagged but strangely melodic at the same time. The album ends on a sort of upbeat note with the winding riffage of “Condor’s Radiant Spawn”, with the drums providing a super tight bounce that will make you feel like your heart will explode at any second. In a good way, of course.

Manifesto Zero is another highly welcome entry from a band we simply can’t get enough of, which is why some of us will be heading down to the Hemlock tonight to check this shit out in the flesh if we can get done with the list in time!