Pentagram & Ghost

Here are two bands that take Black Sabbath as a starting point and each do something “completely different”.

Pentagram.  This band has been around since 1971, loosely based in the Washington, DC area, and essentially our equivalent of Black Sabbath.   For a band that’s been on-again, off-again for all that time without ever making it big – and only getting an album released in 1985 – they’ve had as much inconsistency and turnover on lineups as you might imagine.  The only consistent member is singer Bobby Liebling.  The band has several albums, and a recent studio album, Last Rites.  The music is close enough to Sabbath that it’s borderline a de facto tribute band, although Liebling sounds nothing like Ozzy, Dio, or any other singer for that matter.  I caught them recently in concert at American University in DC; from what I can gather, Liebling’s eccentric and unreliable personality may have made his band persona non grata at the established DC clubs like the Black Cat or 9:30 Club.  Hopefully if Liebling can stay clean - more likely now that he and his wife Hallie have a child, so he's settled down to a normal life as a responsible adult - the band may finally get its act together and start playing better venues.

    As of 2014, however, they remain a cult band.  The closest they got to the big time were a failed audition – in a band member’s basement – in front of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley (who were NOT impressed) in December 1975, and earlier that year, a Liebling scuttled demo session in NYC with Murray Krugman, who worked with Sandy Pearlman in Blue Oyster Cult. 

    “Last Days Here” is a recent documentary about the band, which for obvious reasons focuses heavily on Liebling.  Until recently he was living for the past few decades in his parents’ basement in Germantown, Maryland, a virtually hopeless drug addict with zero marketable skills.  Eventually he moved up to Philadelphia, found a girlfriend (who is now his wife), and got the band going, with some of the inevitable hiccups along the way.  His persistence in sticking with the band is somewhat admirable, although it’s not like he has much of a choice.  Steve “Lips” Kudlow of Anvil – subject of a very similar documentary on that 80s metal band – at least has a catering business for elementary schools to fall back on. 

    Concert.  At American University, most concerts seem to be at the Bender Arena, a small basketball stadium, in between Richie Coliseum (1500) and Baltimore Arena (14000) in capacity – as indeed it is (4500).  I guess the AU student activities group couldn’t get that many, because this Mary Graydon Center Tavern can fit maybe… 300 people.  I don’t know if that many people were even there.  The “Tavern” was nothing more than a huge empty room with no seats.  Even the “stage” wasn’t even above the floor, so if you weren’t in the front row what you saw were the tops of the band member’s heads and not much more. 

    Liebling is a very strange person, visually:  he looks like an old woman, in fact a witch (!!!), with a beard.  His vocal style is distinctive.  His “stage presence”, as it is, seems to be his oddity.  The guitarist, Victor Griffin, reminds me a bit of Duck McDonald (Blue Cheer) but plays a Les Paul.  I know that Les Pauls can definitely give a heavy sound, but shouldn’t there be an unwritten rule that if you’re going for a Black Sabbath sound you should play an SG?  Anyhow.   The band doesn’t jam, and plays its own material fairly faithfully.  If you like their studio recordings, the live show should do just fine, and if you like Black Sabbath, chances are you’ll like Pentagram.

GHOST.   Also known as Ghost BC, this particular band is from Sweden and formed just a few years ago.  Aside from the singer, Papa Emeritus II (not his real name) the two guitarists, bassist, keyboardist and drummer are all known as Nameless Ghouls, and wear identical black robes and plague doctor-esque plastic masks.  PE2 dresses as a satanic pope or anti-bishop, with mitre, robes, etc. and face painted as a skull, a bit better detailed than the Misfits mascot. 

  They have two albums, Opus Eponymous and Infestissumam, with a covers EP called If You Have Ghost.  Soundwise?   Harken back to 1970-72, when Blue Oyster Cult, then known as Stalk-Forrest Group, were rejected by Elektra and told by Columbia to beef up, as that label wanted their own Black Sabbath (who were on Warner Brothers).  Oddly, none of BOC’s songs or albums sound like Black Sabbath.  I’d describe Ghost as, “Blue Oyster Cult with Tony Iommi on guitar instead of Buck Dharma”. 

   Back in December 2000, Wishbone Ash came by to a local club.  At that time, as now, the only original member was Andy Powell.  For that reason, I was skeptical, but 2 hours before showtime I decided, “what the hell”, and went.  WISE DECISION.  Although he wasn’t backed up by Ted Turner, Martin Turner and Steve Upton, the nobodies Powell did hire were certainly competent.  The three guitarists I’ve seen play with this band over the years, Mark Birch, Ben Granfelt, and Muddy Manninen, are all excellent (maybe even better than Powell himself).  I was blown away.

   Likewise with Ghost, who I had never seen in concert.   Here’s some advice: if you keep seeing bands you’ve seen before, you’re far more likely to be disappointed hearing the same sets than to be surprised hearing songs they’ve never played before.  The Nameless Ghoul Guitarists play reissued Gibson RDs (one black, one white); unlike the original 70s models, the reissues have stock PAFs and no active electronics.  Killer guitar sound, mind you, although the tube amps were tastefully hidden away.  Behind them, a backdrop of a cathedral with faux stained glass images of quasi-satanic subject matter, and various smoking braziers of incense.   If Anton LeVey were alive today, he’d probably be their biggest fan.  Like KISS, what you get is a full concert experience, but the music is still a compelling ingredient of the live show.  They even covered the Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun”, as heavily as anyone could imagine that song being played… “it’s alright…”   Check them out on Youtube (apparently they don’t have any concert DVDs yet) or better yet, do yourself a favor and see them live.