PENTAGRAM — First Daze Here Too (review)

PENTAGRAM — First Daze Here Too album cover Boxset / Compilation · 2006 · Doom Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
2/5 ·
Warthur
It seems that the original First Daze Here collection did pretty well for itself, because it was followed up by this subsequent selection of 1970s Pentagram material. First, the good news: unlike the previous collection, which only had one song from the band's 1976 demos, this has a substantially greater proportion of songs from that period, giving a bit more of a balanced view of the band's development during the era. And whilst the inclusion of two cover songs on here might suggest that the bottom of the rehearsal tape barrel had been hit, at least the version of the Rolling Stones' Under My Thumb is a fun, fast-paced metal reworking which manages to recapture the sneering leer of Mick and Keef's version.

Now the bad news: first off, the set is bafflingly split into a two-CD collection for absolutely no good reason that I can see. Granted, some of the material on the second CD has a markedly worse production quality than the first CD - in fact, most of the tracks here are slightly rougher around the edges than the material on First Daze Here, which presumably represents the cream of the crop - but even then there's some nicely-produced tracks on there that are on a par with the material on CD1, so it can't be an attempt to partition tracks into one high-quality disc and one "bonus disc" of shoddier recordings. Equally, the recordings aren't presented in chronological order at all - or, indeed, any date order which makes any sense to me - so it's not a matter of separating early 1970s material from late 1970s material or anything like that. A simple blunder, or a blatant attempt to slap a 2CD price tag on a single CD's worth of material? You decide.

Secondly, as I've already alluded to, the production quality of the demos here is - to my ears, at least - markedly more variable than on First Daze Here, which had a consistently decent sound. I'm not taking raw kvlt black metal demos recorded in a forest during a blizzard bad here - you can at least more or less pick out each individual instrument and hear what the musicians are doing - but it's distracting enough to make the listening experience markedly more of a chore than listening to the preceding collection.

Those who are major Pentagram fans and want to collect as much of the band's early material as possible will probably find First Daze Here Too a decent enough collection, though I suspect even they will be bugged by the bizarre 2CD presentation. The rest of us, however, would be better off listening to the band's studio albums, on which most-to-all of the best tracks on here have been re-recorded at one point or another.
Share this review
more

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Metal Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

MMA TOP 5 Metal ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
Master of Puppets Thrash Metal
METALLICA
Buy this album from our partners
Paranoid Heavy Metal
BLACK SABBATH
Buy this album from our partners
Moving Pictures Hard Rock
RUSH
Buy this album from our partners
Powerslave NWoBHM
IRON MAIDEN
Buy this album from our partners
Rising Heavy Metal
RAINBOW
Buy this album from our partners

New Metal Artists

New Metal Releases

A Sonication Technical Death Metal
OBSCURA
Buy this album from MMA partners
Hin helga kvöl Atmospheric Sludge Metal
SÓLSTAFIR
Buy this album from MMA partners
The Cycles of Suffering Black Metal
BURIAL OATH
Buy this album from MMA partners
The Suns of Perdition - Chapter IV: To Shadow Zion Black Metal
PANZERFAUST
Buy this album from MMA partners
Facilis Descensus Averno Death Metal
SAEVUS FINIS
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Metal Online Videos

DAWN OF REVENGE - Sanctuary [official music video]
DAWN OF REVENGE
Bosh66· 6 days ago
DAWN OF REVENGE - Farewell [official music video]
DAWN OF REVENGE
Bosh66· 6 days ago
DAWN OF REVENGE - Curtain of Death - [official music video]
DAWN OF REVENGE
Bosh66· 6 days ago
DAWN OF REVENGE - Vengeance [official music video]
DAWN OF REVENGE
Bosh66· 6 days ago
DAWN OF REVENGE - I Need You [official music video]
DAWN OF REVENGE
Bosh66· 6 days ago
More videos

New MMA Metal Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Metal News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Follow us on Twitter Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed