To quote legendary Pentagram frontman Bobby Liebling, speaking about himself, “I’m one of the original dinosaurs that made it through the ice age.”

It doesn’t really matter that the dinosaurs died millions of years before the last ice age, because Bobby’s right anyway. Not only for a rock and roller, but for any human being at all to have survived the life he’s led so far into his existence is beyond fantastical. The stories he has to tell are guaranteed to blow your mind like the first time you heard “Forever My Queen,” and having spent an hour with him on the phone to conduct the nearly 5,400-word interview you’re about to read, I can honestly say that you don’t even have to ask him about them; he’ll just tell you. Bobby Liebling is an open book.

Three years sober, married to wife Hallie with a full touring schedule, a movie about his life, the prospect of a new album and a baby on the way, Liebling’s drug years — decades, really — now serve him as vital memories of everything he’s come through to get where he is today. He says he’s blessed and I don’t know how many other explanations there are for it than that, because to hear him tell it, he probably should have died multiple times over by now.

Throughout the course of our conversation, Liebling went from laughing raucously about the mob guys in the Philadelphia neighborhood where he and his wife now live to audibly welling with tears talking about last year’s untimely passing of Blue Cheer bassist/vocalist Dickie Peterson. And even as Pentagram guitarist Russ Strahan announced his departure from the band on March 14 (which Liebling hints at in our conversation), it leaves the door open for new lineup opportunities that will supposedly be announced soon. For now, Pentagram is rounded out by bassist Mark Ammen (Unorthodox) and drummer Gary Isom (Spirit Caravan, Valkyrie).

What you’re about to read is probably the most honest and, again, open, interview I’ve ever had the pleasure to do (and I barely asked any questions!), and it is with great honor that I present it to you, as true to how it happened as possible, in Q&A form after the jump below. Please enjoy.

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Because things have been discouragingly slow around here this week, and because it’s pissing-rain miserable outside, I’ve decided to cap off the week with Khanate, who, during their time together, were likewise slow and miserable. Enjoy the above shortened version of “Dead” from the 2003 Things Viral album, complete with the visual accompaniment of a dude blowing his brains out.

Spring break has come not a moment too soon.

Thanks to the few and proud who did stop by the site this week, most notably the debaters going back and forth on the Moth Eater live review — for the record, I’m a fan — but also to everyone else who did and didn’t comment on the various happenings.

As alluded above, I’m on break next week from my writing program at Rutgers. I have school work to catch up on, but Monday I’ll be posting my interview with Bobby Liebling of Pentagram, so please, look forward to that. Also in the can and coming up in the next couple weeks are chats with Erik Larson about his new band Might Could, former Amorphis bassist Olli-Pekka “Oppu” Laine (he was in the band when they ruled) about his prog-death project Barren Earth and, conducted this very afternoon, a brief check-in with Matt Pike from High on Fire, who despite a crappy phone connection was as pleasant and accommodating as ever. There’ll be more, as well. There always is.

If you’re in Jersey this weekend, I’ll be throwing down tomorrow night (March 13) with my good friends in Clamfight and Rukut at The Saint in Asbury Park, and I’m sure we’d all love it if you stopped by.

Vancouver riff mongers Bison B.C. are gearing up to release their new album, Dark Ages, next month, and as we all know, the new way to roll out singles and album highlight tracks is by putting them on websites that aren’t The Obelisk. It’s an important marketing move for any act looking to make themselves known.

Accordingly, the song “Stressed Elephant” premiered via something called ExploreMusic, whose standing in the heavy rock underground I’m sure is unquestionable and who make a wholly appropriate outlet for music as riffy and bastardly as that of Bison B.C.

“Bitter?” you ask? Yes. Here’s “Stressed Elephant,” because I can:

If there’s one thing that stands out about the Polish scene we’ve been exploring one band at a time (past installments here and here), it’s a universal hunger to be heard. Hell, the main reason this whole thing kicked off was because one of the dudes in Satellite Beaver was like, “Hey man, you need to check out all these other bands too,” when I reviewed Luna Negra. Likewise, Belzebong, an instrumental outfit from Poland, dropped a line in the comments and said to hit up their MySpace. I’m nothing if I’m not the trained monkey of stoner rock and doom metal. Just tell me in what direction to dance and I’m there.

For what it’s worth, Belzebong are the most definitively stoner of the acts from the Polish scene we’ve yet encountered. The two tracks on MySpace are instrumental (with samples) and rely on hyper-grooving riffs to carry the band. It’s a formula that should be familiar to fans of Bongzilla and Electric Wizard, as well as the sundry other acts whose sound basically rounds out to “riffs plus” — riffs plus vocals, riffs plus samples, riffs plus solos, and so on. The guitar is definitely the vocal point, and there are solo/lead lines running throughout “Bong Thrower” that are varyingly lyrical, but Belzebong are a riff band. Any changes they make or flourishes they add, their songs are still based around riffs and riffs and, well, riffs.

It seems like a familiar formula and it is, but like Satellite Beaver, Broken Betty and Luna Negra, if Belzebong aren’t groundbreaking so much in their sound, there are several explanations behind it. First and foremost, there wasn’t a Polish scene to speak of before these bands came along. Consider the Scandinavian lineage of heavy music. Sure, these bands would have access to outsider rock from the internet and word of mouth, buying records, etc., but that’s nowhere near the same as having your own scene. Second, Belzebong (and everyone else covered in this series) are a demo band, just getting their start. If they still have developing to do, that’s to be expected. For what it’s worth now, they’ve got a goat-devil holding a bong with their logo and they’ve got the will to do some serious ear-damage. That’s a pretty killer start if you ask me.

Above the title on the back side of French mayhem rockers Gunslingers’ second album, Manifesto Zero (World in Sound) is the question, “When a Disc and a Head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the Disc?” Each time I’ve sat and listened through this record, which follows in their catalog the critically successful No More Invention, I’ve puzzled over that question. Not because I think a head can’t be hollow – at least in the sense they mean: “Isn’t it possible you’re a fucking moron?” – but a disc is inherently flat. There’s no room for it to be hollow because there isn’t any space in a disc. Especially “disc,” ending with a  ‘c,’ which in this context implies a compact disc. If a disc had space between its two sides it would be a cylinder.

This is my fucking life. These are the things I obsess over.

At least, while I ruminate on these big questions of life I have the recorded-live freakout of Manifesto Zero to accompany, which in a cold post-modern way is very little comfort and yet somehow gets the job done anyway. The six tracks of the album (at about 31 minutes, we’ll call it a full-length because the marketing doesn’t say otherwise) offer a jangly and jagged garage retroism, bouncing murderously through the first several songs until slamming into the 8:15 of “An Eye for a Knife,” which is mean-man noise for a good couple minutes following some deceptive rock simplicity. The fronting work of guitarist/vocalist Gregory Raimo leads this stylish anti-fashion charge, leaving bassist Matthieu Canaguier and drummer Antoine Hadjioannou to keep up, which they do avec enthousiasme.

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As if there was ever a bad time to be on the West Coast of the US, when Earth and Wolves in the Throne Room roll into town, life must seem especially sweet. Trapped in the perpetual gray of a Jersey Spring, I wouldn’t know, but I can only imagine it involves the stripping away of clothes and the giving away of vast sums of cash. And hoverboards, dammit.

Our dear friend the PR wire confirms the varying levels and interpretations of paradise:

Earth have joined up with label mates Wolves in the Throne Room for a week-and-a-half long West Coast tour for this April. The string of dates will also include opening support from cellist Lori Goldston, who will also be part of Earth’s live lineup for the tour.

Earth have been finalizing material for their next full-length to be released on Southern Lord Recordings by early 2011, and will be showcasing some of these new songs on the tour. The Earth lineup on these dates shall consist of:

Dylan Carlson – Guitar
Adrienne Davies – Drums
Karl Blau – Bass
Lori Goldston – Cello

Wolves in the Throne Room have just completed their first Australian tour, alongside French doom unit Monarch!, and will appear alongside Shrinebuilder at a special one-off East Coast appearance in New York City tonight.

Earth / Wolves in the Throne Room / Lori Goldston April 2010 Tour:

4/14/2010 The Oak Street Speakeasy – Eugene, OR
4/15/2010 Noctrum – Eureka, CA
4/16/2010 Slim’s – San Francisco, CA
4/17/2010 Brookdale Lodge – Santa Cruz, CA
4/19/2010 Ché Café – San Diego, CA
4/20/2010 The EchoPlex – Los Angeles, CA
4/22/2010 Rotture – Portland, OR
4/23/2010 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
4/24/2010 Capital Theatre – Olympia, WA with special guests Mount Eerie and Ô Paon

Yet again, The Obelisk asks the big questions.

Speaking of British bands whose songs get irreparably caught in my head and in whose riffs I want to immerse myself for weeks at a time and who are allegedly releasing a new album this year, fucking Electric Wizard, man. I don’t really have a point other than that. Fucking Electric Wizard. In an effort to better your afternoon at work or wherever the hell you are, here’s “Stone Magnet” from their 1995 self-titled debut:

Just one month after it was announced that frontman Ben Ward was leaving Ravens Creed, in a statement directed solely to me, UK thunderdoomers Orange Goblin said the following:

“Oye! I bet you’d like us to go ahead and put out a bloody new album so you could review it and talk about how fucking awesome we are. Well, fuck off, mate. We’re not gonna put out a fucking record this year. In fact, we might not ever put out a new album at all. What about that, eh? Ah, bugger off, you bloody tosser…” [At this point the statement devolved into a long series of specifically British insults that it would be pointless for me to print since no one would understand them.]

Yes. That definitely happened. Or, they said this:

With everybody’s commitments to work, family and other things, we have decided that it is best that we do not commit to any deadline for the next album as we wouldn’t want to rush and deliver a record that we are not 100 percent happy with. Songwriting will continue as and when we can, but we honestly couldn’t say when we will be ready to go into the studio to record again. It will definitely NOT be in 2010. Please rest assured that it will happen, but sometimes it is better to stop and think of what is best for Orange Goblin as a band!

I’ll leave it up to you to decide which one’s more plausible. Any way you slice it you don’t get an Orange Goblin record, so knock yourself out.

If the elder’s fables are true, and there really is a cult of true doom, then I can’t help but feel that somewhere in the initiation process is Black Night, the 1992 debut offering from Maryland legends Iron Man. Among the most sought-after of the Hellhound Records catalog, it’s an album whose legacy has only grown with time. I don’t know if it’s a rite of passage or some kind of challenge to would-be cult inductees or what. Maybe you have to air guitar all of Al Morris III’s riffs while on fire or something. That would be cool in a very Beavis and Butt-Head kind of way.

Shadow Kingdom Records, whose reissue kung fu is like Bruce Lee in fast forward, capped off 2009 by re-releasing this rare doom gem, capturing the Iron Man lineup of Morris, Larry Brown (bass), Ron Kalimon (drums) and Rob Levey (vocals; also the man behind the Stoner Hands of Doom series of festivals) in their first incarnation after leaving behind their Black Sabbath cover band roots and trotting out their premiere batch of original material. With cuts like “Life After Death,” “Black Night,” “A Child’s Future” and classic album opener “Choices,” we can only be glad 18 years later that they did.

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It’s the first Zoroaster album they won’t be releasing on their own, and expectations are high as the band have definitely proven in both the studio and live arenas they’re ready for that elusive next step on the path to world dromination. Voice of Saturn was eminently killer, and I see no reason why Matador shouldn’t be the same. Here’s hoping, and here’s a boatload of PR wire info:

Critically acclaimed “psych metal” band Zoroaster has entered Atlanta’s Living Room Studios (Mastodon, The Black Lips) to begin the recording of its hotly anticipated new album, Matador. A July release via E1 Music is expected.

Zoroaster is working with producer Sanford Parker (Pelican, The Gates of Slumber) on the new album, which will be mastered by Collin Jordan (Black Moth Super Rainbow, Nachtmystium) at The Boiler Room in Chicago, IL.  Matador’s drums and bass are being laid to tape at Atlanta’s Glow in the Dark Studios. Housed in the former location of the renowned Cheshire Sound Studios — the first dual 24 track facility in the Southeast – the recording complex has been home to projects featuring Prince, The Georgia Satellites, Steve Walsh and more.  Zoroaster’s new material is said to be “more direct, more intense and absolutely enveloping.”

Zoroaster will debut a number of new songs at its upcoming SXSW live performances which kick off on Wednesday, March 17 as part of the Action! PR SXSW Showcase (@ Mohawk: 912 Red River St., Austin, TX).  The all ages event will be open to the public as well as SXSW badge and wristband holders.

When asked for comment on Matador, Zoroaster guitarist / vocalist Will Fiore dished, “As a whole, these are the strongest songs we’ve ever put together and they really encompass everything we’ve done until now as a band.  There are some really heavy, slow creepers and some of the faster, more driving songs.  The new material ranges from really aggressive to more melodic and trippy.”  “It’s going to be a pretty straight-forward rock album and I think it’s what we wanted to create with both Dog Magic and Voice of Saturn rolled into one,” offers drummer Dan Scanlan. “There will be a lot of shorter tracks that are very straight forward and hard-hitting — it’s a lot less of a droning record than what people are expecting. The album title Matador sums up the feel of the album perfectly.  It’s an ‘epic’ sort of title; strong and powerful, but graceful.”

Wait. Not “toes.” “Shows.” Throttlerod has some big shows coming up. I’m an idiot.

If you’re anything like me, you think of Throttlerod as the band whose guitarist and vocalist Matt Whitehead made fun of you (playfully, I’m sure) for using the phrase “jagged noise influence” when describing their music in your interview. Then again, maybe you’re not like me in that regard. Might be on my own for that one.

Whatever. I happen to know Throttlerod has some big shows coming up, and I know this because of a mystical email received informing me of same. Observe!

Throttlerod has some big shows coming up [Told you, dude. -- ed.]:

3/18/10 Austin, TX @ Encore **Small Stone Records SXSW Showcase** We play at 8PM sharp, so you know what to do.
3/20/10 Spartanburg, SC @ Ground Zero **this will be our first show [here] in several years and we’ve got a lot in the works, so come early and stay late.
5/14/10 Morgantown, WV @ 123 Pleasant St. w/ Hovel
5/15/10 TBD

As the follow-up to 1998’s Ringmaster, Dusk (Brainticket/Metal Rising), the 2009 offering from San Antonio, Texas, doom bashers Las Cruces, is something of a surprise. Mostly because, since the band more or less called it quits after self-releasing the The Lowest End EP in 2001, there was a good chance we’d have never heard from them again. If for no other reason than because two out of the first three tracks on Dusk have the word “wizard” in their title, that would have been a damn shame.

But not only is Dusk a long time coming in the sense of it being a long time since the band put out their last release, but considering they got back together in 2004 and recorded the album between 2006-2007, it’s been a while on that scale as well. We can only wonder what caused the probably numerous delays that held it back from seeing official release, but finally holding a finished copy of the record, Las Cruces don’t seem to have missed a beat.

Dusk is dudely riffer’s doom. Mark Zamarron, who sings lead vocals on the album (since out of the band) isn’t afraid to let a little classic metal misogyny fly, as “Banished” and “Cocaine Wizard Woman” will attest, but there are souls being burned, Christians being slaughtered and no shortage of blood being spilled otherwise, so I don’t think it’s something particularly against women — they’re just also on the list. If you’ve ever felt like you need a how-to guide for penning heavy metal lyrics, a quick perusal of the Dusk liner notes will do you well.

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I’ve been waiting for High on Fire to finally get a budget for a video. Not that “Rumors of War” from Death is this Communion was bad, but it was pretty much the shortest song on the album and the video was basically the band playing in a warehouse. If it doesn’t have a battle axe, it hardly seems appropriate.

The ensuing clip for “Frost Hammer,” from the band’s much-lauded Snakes for the Divine LP, seems to have the cure for anyone wanting of the epic. To wit:

And sayeth the PR wire:

Filmed on location in both Los Angeles, CA and NYC with director Kevin Custer for Toaster in the Tub, High on Fire’s “Frost Hammer” video showcases intense performance footage of the award-winning band juxtaposed alongside “the epic tale of a warrior’s sojourn to the cold and barren Plateau of Leng where he secures the fabled Frost Hammer that will be used to enact the final rites and complete the dark rebirth and reign of the Frost Child.” [Duh. – ed.]

If you’ve been around stoner rock for 35 seconds or more, chances are you’ve encountered at least one band that made you say, “Damn, this sounds just like Black Sabbath.” Assuming you weren’t actually listening to Black Sabbath when you said it, it could have been just about anyone. In one way or another, every band in the genre is indebted to the Birmingham gods, whether they like it or not. San Franciscan four-piece Orchid like it. They like it plenty.

Orchid’s debut EP, the 16-minute Through the Devil’s Doorway (out via Germany’s The Church Within Records) is an exercise in praise of all things Sabbath. Bassist Nickel is Geezer, guitarist Mark Thomas Baker is Tony Iommi, drummer Carter Kennedy is no Bill Ward, but no one is, and vocalist Theo Mindell is cast in the Ozzy Osbourne role, which he handles ably (he is also a tattoo artist and in charge of the band’s formidable graphics). The four songs that make up the release bring Sabo worship to new heights most bands wouldn’t dare to reach even if they could; each one having a companion in the Ozzy era catalog.

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…(Alex knows I’m just breaking his balls.)

New York’s sludgy testosterone rockers The Resurrection Sorrow kick off the first part of their Unholy Divine tour tomorrow, March 10, and the PR wire would like you to know all about it:

Still steadily promoting the hell out of their debut full-length Hour of the Wolf, thunderous New York rock quartet The Resurrection Sorrow will kick off the first leg of their three-part Unholy Divine tour tomorrow in Wilmington, Delaware.

The Resurrection Sorrow ’s The Unholy Divine tour, Part I:
3/10/2010 Mojo 13 – Wilmington, DE
3/11/2010 The Smiling Moose – Pittsburgh, PA
3/12/2010 The Depot – York, PA w/ Backwoods Payback, Wrath of Typhoon
3/13/2010 The Black and Red Bar – Washington DC w/ King Giant
3/14/2010 The Brighton Bar – Long Branch, NJ w/ The Ominous Order of Filthy Mongrels
3/15/2010 Lit Lounge – New York, NY w/ Maegashira