MetalSucks contributor Leyla Ford recently spoke with PENTAGRAM frontman Bobby Liebling. Liebling shared some news about the band's forthcoming album, as well as what he's been up to nowadays:
ON THE NEW ALBUM:
You’re off to record the Last Rites album soon, I believe?
I leave Wednesday morning and we start recording the album this coming Sunday night [November 21].
I’m sure you’re pretty excited about it. Can you tell me a bit about the new record?
Actually, the songs on Last Rites are predominantly, I’d say two-thirds [of them are] songs I wrote in 1970, and if you’re familiar with any Pentagram stuff at all… you know each album is usually a sixty-forty split. Sixty percent is stuff that I did in the early ‘70s, and forty percent is collaborations and new stuff. The upcoming album is slated to have thirteen songs, but we don’t know if we’re going to be able to record all of them. We’re going to try to get it all in. It’s going to be a shorter album, but it’ll be part of a double-disc set with an hour-long live DVD from last year’s Maryland Deathfest.
Is there a definite release date for it?
No, not a definite date, but it’s scheduled to be released in early April. I was told by my superiors [laughs], as it were, that I shouldn’t talk about the record label, but I will say that we’ve got a multi-album deal and it’s with a significant, well, let’s say the largest label I’ve ever been on.
ON THE NEW ALBUM:
You’re off to record the Last Rites album soon, I believe?
I leave Wednesday morning and we start recording the album this coming Sunday night [November 21].
I’m sure you’re pretty excited about it. Can you tell me a bit about the new record?
Actually, the songs on Last Rites are predominantly, I’d say two-thirds [of them are] songs I wrote in 1970, and if you’re familiar with any Pentagram stuff at all… you know each album is usually a sixty-forty split. Sixty percent is stuff that I did in the early ‘70s, and forty percent is collaborations and new stuff. The upcoming album is slated to have thirteen songs, but we don’t know if we’re going to be able to record all of them. We’re going to try to get it all in. It’s going to be a shorter album, but it’ll be part of a double-disc set with an hour-long live DVD from last year’s Maryland Deathfest.
Is there a definite release date for it?
No, not a definite date, but it’s scheduled to be released in early April. I was told by my superiors [laughs], as it were, that I shouldn’t talk about the record label, but I will say that we’ve got a multi-album deal and it’s with a significant, well, let’s say the largest label I’ve ever been on.
That’s great, congratulations!
Thank you, it’s been long enough coming. 2011 marks Pentagram’s fortieth anniversary.
Wow, that’s a good, long run. Hopefully with many more years to come.
We’ll see! That’s why I’m calling it Last Rites, just in case! But there are four songs that are brand-new, and the other nine consist of several I wrote on my own, and a few I wrote with my original drummer, Geof O’Keefe. Those are the ones scheduled to be on there. But one of the old ones might go, as well as a new one. We’re doing a cram course, you might call it. All the other Pentagram albums that have been done were recorded over a three-month period. This album is going to be done in three weeks. We’re rehearsing it five days, that’s it, and these songs have never been played by anyone in the band [currently].
ON HIS LIFE THESE DAYS:
My life has changed in a great deal of ways. I met my wife, and the last three years I’ve had a very, very different life. I’ve been clean for the first time after forty years of drug addiction — that’s a long, long time. Now I have a baby, and a house, and a dog, and a picket fence and backyard and all that stuff! Being straight is a really new awakening for me, and it’s really fantastic. And some people might think it’s corny, but I just tribute it to the guy upstairs nowadays. Pentagram was never a “Satan” band like people think it was, it was always just giving you the layout, like the album says, of your choices, because you have to make a choice, and there are two ways you can go. The songs were sort of like warning,s and people mistook those for us being black metal and all that kind of stuff. Then came the eras of the death metal and black metal bands, a lot of them were influenced [by us] supposedly, and they tell me on tours and stuff, but, you know…
No comments:
Post a Comment