Search - Pentagram :: Turn to Stone

Pentagram = TRUE Metal

Crypt | Arkham | 01/09/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Children, once again, it is time to trash all of your media hyped, watered down, pop-poser metal/mallcore cds and pick up a truly worthy Heavy Metal release. First of all, Pentagram are veterans. They've been doing this allmost as long as Black Sabbath. They are considered the very first American Doom Metal band. Now about this disk... It's basically a "best of" containing songs from their first 3 albums. The music is rock & roll from the deepest pits. Dark, brooding, angry at times, depressive at others, with a strong blues/jazz influence in the songwriting. The sound comes very close at times to Black Sabbath's first 4 albums. Guitarist Victor Griffin was and still is heavily inspired by Sabbath's Tony Iommi. Not a Black Sabbath rip-off by any means, more like very Sabbath influenced. That means HEAVY, dark, bluesy, and even quite evil sounding. True Heavy Metal in it's purest form. This is where it's at. Real songwriting. Real substance. Real METAL! True Metal is almost dead in the mainstream which has been literally FLOODED with Korn ripoffs, (c)rap-metal, and other watered down, hollow forms of hard pop music. Support real Metal and get this cd!"

Rock N' Rollish Heavy Metal

abyssmagazine@sapo.pt | 02/07/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Well, these guys were picked up by Peaceville in the 80's, but actually their career goes back to the early seventies, a time when many bands weren't even imagined or think about. Pentagram possess a sound which characterises an epoch, much alike Black Sabbath, these guys have a real gift to come up with harmonic passages and some fantastic catchy melodies. When compared with many bands from nowadays, this is of course easy-listening, and this sort of Rock N' Rollish Heavy Metal isn't produced anymore at all, so specially to me it is true bliss to put this record spinning and listen to the mid-paced tempos, the harmonic guitars & the exceptional dark feel this band emanates. It brings me back a lot of memories from stuff I listened on vinyl when I was kid, and perhaps for that particular reason I think the music on this album sounds very gloomy and the overall atmosphere adds up a strong doom edge to the all piece. In fact, "Turn to Stone", is almost like a classic album, Peaceville compiled an anthology of tracks taken from 3 Pentagram releases (all 3 released by Peaceville), "Relentless", "Be Forewarned" and "Day of Reckoning", among these albums some absolute classics can be found, case of "All your Sins", "Death Row", "Relentless", etc.
I feel many people who listen to Heavy Metal these days don't actually have a background on all these great bands, I also have my doubts if people realise that bands like Cream, Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath had a huge blues influence, the songs are of course all dominated by the truly killer riffs and of course by the other vital element, the rhyme-singing lyrics (that seem more to float like a poem) uttered by vocalist Bobby Liebling, which to be honest has many things in common with Ozzy himself.
There is no questioning that Pentagram are a band everyone should acquaint themselves with, whether you're a fan of Heavy Metal or not, the music is very enjoyable and you'll have a lot of quality minutes of music ahead.
Abyss Magazine @ Nuno M. [CR]"