The announcement of a new album by Pentagram Chile, the band around the charismatic cosmopolitan Anton Reisenegger, who should also be known from bands like Criminal, Lock Up or Brujeria, came to me out of nowhere. This is only the second album by the band, which was founded back in 1985 and has been on ice for a long time in the meantime, changing its name because of the namesake doomers from the USA around Bobby Liebling and forming the ominous triumvirate of Chilean death metal together with Atomic Aggressor and Sadism.
Just how influential the Chileans have been in the past can be seen from the fact that bands like Dismember have been seen wearing Pentagram shirts on promo photos or Napalm Death have covered “Demoniac Possession”, a track by the South Americans.
But now let's move on to the new album “Eternal Life of Madness”, on which the band collaborated with the French label Listenable Records for the first time. The great, breathtaking cover artwork by Santiago Caruso, who also created the artwork for the previous album “The Malefice”, immediately catches the eye. The new cover in particular, which shows a headless creature sitting on a throne in an apocalyptic night-time scene, is reminiscent of the master of surrealism Salvador Dali.
But now, after the music-historical classification and visual aspects, let's finally turn to the main thing, namely the music. Here, too, superlatives can be thrown around. The eleven tracks with a total playing time of 55 minutes offer pretty much the best that the inclined listener can expect from an old-school mixture of death and thrash metal. The absolutely remarkable thing is that the four Chileans always manage to keep the music fresh and exciting, even though they often stay in mid-tempo territory - the faster parts seem all the better placed for it. Groove generally plays a major role, the beginning of "Possessor" is a fitting example, as is "The Portal" with its Slayer-like vibes. "Devourer of Life" on the other hand, starts as a straight, traditional thrash song, which then emphasizes melodic elements. "The Seeds of the Deed" on the other hand, starts very intricately slow and convinces with extremely simple, but all the more effective riffing. With "No one shall survive", this awesome album ends with a great slow-starting track that features riffs in the best Celtic Frost style and develops into a great death/thrash crusher. In conclusion, I can only recommend this great album to everyone who likes traditional, time-honored death and thrash metal and worships bands like Celtic Frost, Goatlord, Possessed, Winter, Slayer, Pentacle, Sadistic Intent or Lair of the Minotaur.
