Halloween is just around the corner, turning our attention to darker, scarier things - the kind of things that heavy metal, as a genre, so often explores and glorifies. It's generally agreed metal originated out of Birmingham, England when Tony Iommi constructed the song "Black Sabbath" out of the musical tritone known as the "diabolus in musica", or "The Devil's Interval." While most bands that came to be known as heavy metal in Sabbath's wake were really just hard rock bands, one band shepherded Sabbath's gloom and doom, cultivating it throughout the 70s and 80s until the eventual doom explosion of the 90s and aughts vindicated their tireless and troublesome efforts. That band was Arlington, Virginia's Pentagram. Fronted by the oft-colorful and consistently self-destructive Bobby Liebling, the band's revolving door of members left behind their early blue-rock trappings to become one of the most highly regarded underground heavy metal acts of the last 40 years, whose legend has only grown in time. Above is a picture of me and Bobby after Pentagram's train wreck of a show in Indianapolis last winter. Living up to legend, the night before the band's guitarist had quit forcing Bobby to recruit a new guitarist on the fly to play the show. Needless to say it wasn't exactly a stellar performance, but it was admirable that Liebling would not give up, making sure that the show would go on - much like he has throughout the years toiling away in obscurity and in a haze of hardcore drug abuse that probably should have killed him years ago. So for this Halloween turn down the lights, turn up the stereo and give props to the band that virtually defines Rocktober..."The Ghoul" live
"Live Free and Burn" live
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