Pentacle – “…Rides the Moonstorm”
The early death metal feel of the vocals remind me of both Death Strike and early Morgoth. In addition, Obituary seems to crawl up here and there. But don’t be misled; Pentacle stands fine on its own. The guitar sound is basic and to the point, with straight up early Celtic Frost type of simple rhythms. I hadn’t heard any band do this stuff in a while. There are a lot of awful bands now claiming that they were raised on Possessed or Hellhammer, but have you noticed that they surely do not sound like it!? I’ll go as far as to say that I find Pentacle a hell of a lot more enjoyable than some of that early Venom because the intentional proficiency found here is way more listenable than say “At War with Satan” type of sloppiness. Pentacle sound proficient, efficient, and catchy, all at once! How refreshing to hear a band actually incorporate the whole early 1980’s death metal feel into its music, not just saying that they “grew up with Morbid Tales.” Pentacle’s sound has nothing in common with a lot of the garbage out there now called death metal. No cheese. No fancy guitar solos. This is classic death metal, except that it’s from 1998 and the sound was made this way, not accidentally. If you have the early possessed, Celtic Frost, etc…, you will find that Pentacle fits perfectly with that “old time” early death metal.