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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 a 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/producer Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Big Scenic Nowhere, etc.), drummer Henry Vasquez (Legions of Doom, Saint Vitus, Blood of the Sun, etc.) and bassist Scooter Haslip (Mos Generator, Saltine). It would be hard to overstate the energy the new band brings to songs like InchLive Again,Inch InchSolve the PuzzleInch or InchIn the Panic Room,Inch 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, and as just their third studio in the last 15 years, it's not a moment to neglect as they dig into a cut like InchDull PainInch or InchLady Heroin,Inch 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, InchLady Heroin, have I seen the last of you?Inch 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's not all brooding, even if it is doom. InchThundercrestInch is brash and the nodding title-track 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, th
