SHOWS doom metal, early moods, pentagram, ventura music hall Rob Shepyer February 21, 2025 0 Comments

Pentagram- Doom Ages Like Fine Wine At Ventura Music Hall

Something about old age injects more gravitas into a doom metal musician’s art. Perhaps its being closer to the great beyond, that dark place from which inspiration comes from that we all join at the end of our days. Perhaps something about graying hair and wrinkled skin makes the purveyor of doom metal all the more convincing to an audience.

Doom metal, is of course a genre about bleakness and sorrow. A long life devoted to that style of music must have experienced everything the world has to offer, so to come away with singing “doom to world” instead of “Joy to world” gives fans the assurance that this artist is the real deal, and they’re not just playing a character in a gimmick.

Pentagram at Ventura Music Hall shot by Steve Martinez

Then of course, there’s pace. Doom metal is slow metal. Slowness and sloth are what some equate with growing old. Dragging your feet, letting time pass you by because it makes no difference. All these ideas are second nature to doom metal’s mournful verses and tones.

Bobby Liebling and the boys in Pentagram have been around since the inception of doom metal. Playing this genre of music before it had a name. To them, it was just a heavier, more psychedelic rock and roll than anything happening in either America or England at the time. As a North American counterpart to Black Sabbath, Pentagram inspired so many bands across genres, regardless of where they sit in anyone’s mount Rushmore of heavy metal.

related content: Candlemass at 1720: The Church of Doom

All those fans and metalheads came out to Ventura Music Hall, not just to pay tribute to one of the most iconic heavy bands of all time, but to say they got to see the mighty Pentagram, a band that will one go down as one of the seminal, irreplaceable heavy metal originals.

They were touring to promote their new album, Lightning in a Bottle, which features such tracks as “Lasy Heroin”, I’ll Certainly See You in Hell”, and “Walk the Sociopath”. Songs like these show us that Pentagram has never lost its step, still devoted to making soundtracks for a grittier way of existing.

Darkness abound through their music and art, one might think they were about to see an evil wizard appear on stage in the form of Bobby Liebling. On the contrary though, Bobby’s stage presence is very much alive, more alive than most people from his generation. Fearlessly and showing the world full sexual strength, he gyrates on stage with enough pelvic thrust and swagger to make women, young and old, swoon and gaze at the stage in nothing short of awe.

The bands set crossed out numerous hits from their many decades in doom such as “Forever My Queen” and “Sign of the Wolf”. Songs like this diversified the night’s sonic character, this wasn’t music to play at a graveyard like others in the genre they spawned. This was sexy, almost romantic in its witchiness, and most all mesmerizing.