Between records like Relentless and Show ‘Em How, Pentagram have never wanted for self-awareness in terms of album titles. The gauntlet thrown down by Lightning in Bottle is very much in this tradition. The 10th Pentagram album sees founding frontman and doom figurehead Bobby Liebling leading a new cast of players that includes guitarist and producer Tony Reed, drummer Henry Vasquez and bassist Scooter Haslip. It would be hard to overstate the energy the new band brings to songs like “Live Again,” “Solve the Puzzle” or “In the Panic Room,” but Lightning in a Bottle is unmistakably a Pentagram record, of course in Liebling’s unremittingly charismatic performance and the groove conjured to back it.
Recorded with Reed at the helm, Lightning in a Bottle recalls the best of what has allowed Pentagram to cast an influence across decades and generations of musicians, bands and worshippers of Riff, it is not a moment to neglect as they dig into a cut like “Dull Pain” or “Lady Heroin,” the latter of which is a naked reconciliation on the part of Liebling with a lifelong addiction to opiates that’s become an inextricable part of the Pentagram story.
As he wonders in the lyrics, “Lady Heroin, have I seen the last of you?” it becomes difficult to know whether the separation would be through sobriety or death, and that ambiguity becomes part of what makes the song so striking. It is not all brooding, even if it is doom. “Thundercrest” is brash and the nodding title rack brings to mind past glories without actually reliving them. The central message, any way you want to look at it, is that no matter how much the band has been through over the last half century plus, they remain a singular force.
Lightning in a Bottle might not be the first Pentagram reboot, but it brings fresh ideas and dynamic to one of doom’s most classic, formative acts, and as soon as you hit play, the band absolutely own the moment of their own making.
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