PENTAGRAM — Day Of Reckoning (review)

PENTAGRAM — Day Of Reckoning album cover Album · 1987 · Doom Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Time Signature
Madman...

Genre: old school doom metal

Look around you. Where are you? In a graveyard at night. That's right. You can hear the howling wind in the nearby trees and the whispers of the souls of the dead. You are not alone. Sitting in front of you is Satan himself, passing you the bong.

Are you ready for another round of satanic bongripping? Because that's pretty much the sort of twisted atmosphere that this doom metal classic evokes with its full on Black Sabbath-esque (very Sabbath-esque) stoned doom metal.

After the uptempo, yet primitively dark title track, the aptly titled "Evil Seed" sneaks in on you, making effective use of the "Black Sabbath formula" with muffled doomy riffs in the verses interrupted by bursts of equally heavy but all out distorted riff sections (Candlemass have also made heavy use [pun intended] of this formula on their recent releases). "Broken Wows" is another Black Sabbath-inspired track, which makes awesome use of guitar harmonics in the main riff. More primitive and blues- derived, but no less doom-ladden, is "When the Screams Come" - which, nonetheless, contains some haunting guitar harmonics. With its 9 minutes "Burning Savior" is a more epic affair, which starts out with a dark clean-guitar intro before bursting into a series dark hard rock riffs, which build up to a sonic climax towards the middle, which is then broken down into a heavier and more doom-ladden section. The riffage may, to some listeners, be too primitive for such a long track, but the structure of the track is really what makes this a perfect epic doom metal track (and who says you can't have long songs with simple riffs anyway?). "Madman" is an uptempo track, and, while it is perhaps not the strongest track on the album, it is a welcome listen after the dense "Burning Savior" and the preceding doomy tracks. "Wartime" is another uptempo track, but a much stronger one than "Madman", because there are more things going on.

Pentagram are one of the most important, but also most underrated doom metal band of all time, carrying on the original style of metal created by Black Sabbath. The music is primitive and has a stoner atmosphere, but it is dark and doomy, and bloody awesome.
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