PENTAGRAM (A Keg Full Of Dynamite) LP/CD
This album, released on Black Widow Records, is the first authorised release of a PENTAGRAM live-show, recorded in 1978 at The Keg, a well-known rock club in the Georgetown section of Washington D.C. This period of the band is also known as the High Voltage Era, with Richard Kueht and Paul Trowbridge on guitars, Martin Swaney on bass, Joe Hasselvander on drums and Bobbly Liebling on vocals, of course. The tracklist includes all the band's classics like for example "When The Screams Come", "Livin' In A Ram's Head", "20 Buck Spin", "Review Your Choices" and a few more. The entire sound is better than the Death Row album (which is still highly recommandable) and especially the live versions of "Much Too Young To Know" and "Earth Flight" are more dynamic and different, to compare them with the versions on "First Daze Here". Another surprise is the hard-driven "Day Of Reckoning", but it's less darker than the re-recorded version on the second album.
At the end of the album, one can hear "When The Screams Come" and "Livin' In A Ram's Head, taken from the original test pressing 7" issued on High Voltage, which is nearly impossible to find nowadays. Both versions are really heavy, due to the powerful drum sound which stands in front of the mix. Once again, it's interesting to hear how different the late 70's PENTAGRAM were sounding in opposite to the reborn version of the 80's, named Death Row that came up with a much darker approach, which based more on the influence of Victor Griffin (Place Of Skulls). For all those die-hard Pentafans among the readers, I give you the advice to order "A Keg Full Of Dynamite" immediately, because it's a historical and authentic document of the late-70's dual guitar line-up. The rest should better start with one of the official studio albums, due to the worse sound-quality.
(KK)