Pentagram: First Daze Here Too (2006)
“Clear vinyl week” continues on VinylSpinning with this second official compilation (impossible to even estimate the number of UN-official ones out there) aimed at brushing the cobwebs off the ultra-rare, unreleased 1970s recordings by underground metal icons Pentagram.
Such was the success of 2001’s meticulously curated First Daze Here collection that it was simply a matter of time and popular demand until Relapse Records unveiled the rather unimaginatively named First Daze Here Too five years later, but would it be worth the wait?
Personally, I’d say the answer wasn’t a unanimous ‘yes’ but a convincing one, though ‘tis true that the label and surviving band members Bobby Liebling (vocals), Geof O’Keefe (drums), Vincent McAllister (guitar), and Greg Mayne (bass) had to dig pretty deep into their vaults for these 22 cuts.
And that meant unearthing all manner of semi-professional material -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- that Pentagram’s wholly independent, oft-unstable line-ups managed to record between 1972 and ‘76, some of it in actual studios and some of it direct from the rehearsal room.
Among the ‘good’ (and downright great!) I’ll single out the bombastic, cathartic “Wheel of Fortune,” the hard-driving “Much too Young to Know” and “Smokescreen,” and a couple of blood-curdling, psych-spiked doom ballads in “When the Screams Come” and “Be Forewarned.”
Among the ‘bad’ (or simply corroded beyond bootleg decrepitude) are original, must-hear renditions of sinister favorites like “Frustration” and “Target,” a promising goth rocker named “Nightmare Gown,” and -- for the diehard bats in the belfry -- a ten-minute jam on “Show ‘em How.”
And among the legitimately ‘ugly’ (or at least strange and uncharacteristic) one finds numerous, basically unfinished demos such as “Virgin Death” and “Die in Your Sleep,” as well as surprisingly doom-deprived hard rock covers of The Stones’ “Under My Thumb” and The Yardbirds’ “Little Games.”
Along with the rather expertly premeditated “Teaser” (so infectious I’m surprised Gene Simmons didn’t make an offer to buy it, as he and Paul did other Pentagram tunes), the latter prove that Pentagram weren’t so stubborn as to reject more commercial styles in their search for that ever-elusive recording contract.
Their loss may have been modern heavy metal fans’ gain, because it kept Pentagram exiled to cult status long enough the group’s next incarnation of Liebling, guitarist Victor Griffin, bassist Martin Swaney, and drummer Joe Hasselvander, produced a pair of seminal ‘80s doom LPs.
And, of course, it kept this ‘70s trove of far-from-perfect but still fascinating Pentagram music almost hermetically sealed, historically speaking, for future generations of metal-heads to discover, like a lost branch on the family tree.
Sadly, guitarist McAllister passed away just weeks after this album’s release (his sometime six-string partner Randy Palmer had died in ‘02) and bassist Mayne followed in ‘21, but both Liebling and O’Keefe are thankfully still with us, enjoying some measure of belated worship.
More Pentagram: Relentless, Day of Reckoning, Be Forewarned, First Daze Here (The Vintage Collection).
