Sub-Basement by Pentagram (CD, 2001)

Black Widow Records

8019991559802

25050183473

Pentagram

CD

2001

Sub-Basement

Heavy Metal

Stereo

Recorded at Polar Bear Lair Studios, Middletown, Maryland between February and June 2001. The second album that Pentagram recorded as a duo and their fifth overall, SUB-BASEMENT came out in 2001 around the time when doom metal finally began reaching a wider audience--30 years after Pentagram helped spawn it. With founder Bobby Liebling on vocals and Joe Hasselvander on everything else, SUB-BASEMENT sounds nothing like the doom of its contemporaries, instead revelling in a hard-rock swagger as the band emphasizes the Blue Cheer elements of their formula over the Sabbath ones. Remarkably, despite modern technology, Liebling and Hasselvander also recreate the murky production aura of the band's most seminal recordings. Straight from a slab of vinyl spinning in the devil's lair (located, naturally, just below the basement) circa 1974, tracks such as "Buzz-saw" and "Mad Dog"--among many other highlights--are a fist-raising clinic for the younger doom set. In 2009, Seasons of Mist reissued SUB-BASEMENT with bonus tracks.

1

MSI Music Distribution

USA