Rating: 10.0

Country: USA

Release Date: 2005

Track list:
1. Child Of Darkness
2. Enslaver Of Humanity
3. Frozen Fear
4. One-Way Road
5. Serpent Venom
6. Last Call
7. Drive Me To The Grave
8. Skinned
9. Through The Gates Of Hell
10. Touch The Sky
11. Child Of Darkness II
12. Time Bomb
13. Nighttime Killers
14. Axe To Grind

Band Website: Bedemon

Bedemon - Child of Darkness

Randy Palmer- Guitars, Bass
Mike Matthews- Bass, Guitars
Geof O’Keefe- Drums, Guitars
Bobby Liebling- Vocals, Feedback Guitar

Is this my purchase of 2006? Until the momentous ‘First Days Here Too' arrives on my doorstep (probably tomorrow, hahah), you'd better believe this is THE single best thing I've bought in a very long time. I've had these songs on a shoddy, sloppy CD (yeah, from a certain disreputable company that has been milking the Pentagram cow for their/his own financial benefit) for a while now, but THIS release, while sounding only marginally better than that malicious bootleg, benefits substantially from the amount of TLC invested into its presentation. As with most Black Widow releases, the packaging is absolutely SUPERB and absolutely WORTH any import prices you'll have to dole out, while the liner notes, lovingly penned by drummer GOD Geof O'Keefe and bassist Mike Matthews, are heartrending, honest, bittersweet, poignant, recounting the life of one of heavy rock's most talented soldiers, guitarist Randy Palmer. EVERYTHING you'd want to know about Bedemon is probably contained within the hefty booklet, Geof and Mike explaining all aspects of Bedemon mythology via write-ups, song-by-song dissections and the like. Add to this the wealth of rare photos, artwork and full lyrics, and you have THE most essential doom purchase of this millennium. Indeed, these are the remaining pieces of the puzzle first constructed by Perry Grayson in that excellent issue of Metal Maniacs!

If you haven't heard Bedemon, I can assure you that if you consider yourself an admirer of the art peddled by Black Sabbath and Pentagram, you will delight and revel in the songs presented here. It is very likely that you will gorge yourself with hedonistic abandon, and that you won't listen to anything else for some time. You see, Bedemon was a band that somehow managed to sound completely OF their time, yet wholly AHEAD of it. By the year 1973, there had been a host of heavy-handed bands that had erupted from American soil- Sir Lord Baltimore, Dust, Cactus, Granicus, Bloodrock, among many others carried forth a torch first lit by Blue Cheer in 1968, building upon the garagey, acid-drenched muscular garage leanings of Grand Funk Railroad, Yesterday's Children, Morgen, Frijid Pink, The Stooges and Josefus to catapult American rock to new heights of depravity, debauchery and VOLUME. Yet, of all these bands, I would humbly suggest that the immortal Pentagram had them all licked in terms of sophistication, musicianship, songcraft and bludgeoning HEAVINESS, somehow synthesizing the morbid horror and despotic despondency of the era's foremost doom bands with the growling, steamrolling DRIVE of American motor rock and the sweltering, hip-shaking rock n'roll groove of the psychedelic era, The Stooges and The Rolling Stones. Underlying all this was an exceptionally developed sense of melody and dynamics, Bobby Liebling's ethereal, foreboding voice, Geof O'Keefe's remarkable sense of touch, Greg Mayne's fluid, fluent basslines and most of all Vincent McAllister's ingenious guitar work all coagulating into a mysterious, demonic whole.

Our protagonist, Randy Palmer, served a stint in Pentagram with mainstay Geof O'Keefe, but throughout his time with Pentagram, he was concocting a seething brand of caustic, dark rock n'roll all his own, and consequently recruited Mike Matthews, Geof O'Keefe and Bobby Liebling to breathe life into his cadaverous compositions. The recordings presented here were for the most part, as folklore has it, recorded with a reel-to-reel tape deck in an abandoned warehouse, with several tracks recorded in Randy's own basement. As such, do NOT expect a studio-caliber recording here. While I certainly own Pentagram recordings that are of worse quality than this, this isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, what I would call an easy listen if you're expecting a good mix. These are REHEARSAL recordings, remember. Yet, I cannot, for the life of me, imagine why ANYONE would lament the quality of these recordings- the brutal coarseness and hollow, labyrinthine feel of these tracks does MUCH to accent the gloomy, ponderous, devious subject matter of the music.

Musically, it is glaringly apparent that Bedemon is far more inclined towards Black Sabbath than Pentagram have ever been (even in the post- Death Row days with Mr Griffin). This is all perfectly understandable when one considers the affection that Mr Palmer nurtured and nursed for Iommi and company throughout his musical career, and I can, without any sort of hesitation whatsoever, say that I would place many of these tracks alongside the finest Sabbath compositions as far as creepy, unnerving, bludgeoningly barbaric riff-driven heavy metal goes. The music contained on this recording is far more linear than a lot of Pentagram stuff from the same period, who had a tendency to explore more unconventional song structures/faster tempos, or wedge a few sweaty rock n'roll ditties (“Starlady”) in between the demonic conjurations. Yet, there is more ‘'space'' here than one can find in much Pentagram stuff. The arrangements are sparser, and there are more sonic pockets for nuances and musical subtleties. The vacuousness of the warehouse they recorded in also affords the recordings a natural reverb that really adds to the impenetrably dark atmosphere of the music, this is CHILLING stuff!

Yes, other than Iron Claw or a few numbers off Trapeze's incendiary 'Medusa' LP, this is the HEAVIEST stuff you can get from the early ‘70s. “Child Of Darkness” comes howling out the gate with a corrosive, flesh-searing guitar tone, Randy Palmer flogging the life out of a set of anguished, droning chords while Geof O'Keefe pounds on his coffins with convincing Bill Ward abandon. Bobby Liebling's voice coos with a come-hither, dark sensuality, effortlessly chilling like the night wind, while Mike Matthews' bass thuds ominously in the background, a death knell ushering condemned souls to their inevitable grave. This track is SO fucking skull-poundingly heavy it HAS to be heard to be believed- no studio gimmickry here, Geof really IS hitting everything that hard…and that solo! Dear Asmodeus, it's like the end of the “Snowblind ” solo was sent howling through the depths of dementia and delirium!

Fast forward to “Enslaver Of Humanity” and we are greeted with more nefarious, acidic DOOM, Bobby providing a wall of guitar feedback as well as vocals, adding another layer of crazed cacophony to the paranoid government conspiracy lyrics. Again, another scorching, screeching banshee solo from Mr Palmer…fuck, these leads FUME with hellfire,ARGHHH!!!! “Frozen Fear” has Bobby all but nicking the vocal melody off “Snowblind” before a plodding, corpse-molesting chorus riff kicks in. 01:54 through, and Randy thrusts us into a deceptively tranquil, morose passage that progressively builds up into a squall of surging, unearthly guitars and insistent, rippling bass, Randy inserting liberal amounts of wailing, escalating lead guitar into the fray.

“One Way Road” has Randy exploring a vastly different angle, indulging his affinity for Sir Lord Baltimore and the heavier American psych of the late ‘60s with a piledriver garage-rock riff and a SCREAMING Louis Dambra-esque solo to cap it all off. How about the lyrics? “The carpets stay crimson…when you lie on the floor”.. Randy's confessions take further shape throughout “Serpent Venom”, soundtracked by minor chord sludge, cantankerous crash cymbals and perhaps THE most nasty solo on the record- “When the serpent's fang bites into my flesh/ It's a feeling I want, I get, I relish…Don't do as I do, Do as I say/ Nothing's so torturous as the serpent you obey”. The epitome of doom, really, the song's conviction and desperation affording an anguished, despairing conviction to the song.

All this, of course, is followed in breathtaking fashion by “Last Call”, perhaps my favorite Bedemon song of them all. Without question, this is the most Pentagram sounding track of the lot (think “Be Forewarned” , for instance), a spacious, grippingly atmospheric piece accented by ornate, whispering guitar melodies, an-inappropriate-but-yet-not abrasive fuzz solo by Randy and one of Bobby's finest vocal performances to date. If there was ever a man that could cohere the onset of death and decay in vocal form, it would be Mr Liebling, who lends the lines “I want to flee but it's too late/ My soul is in the grip of fate/ Cllose my eyes and one last breath/ Feel the cold, cold hands of death” with an inhuman, ghastly TERROR that leaps out the speakers and absolutely SEIZES you. “Drive Me To The Grave” balances a gut-churning, devious verse riff with a PUMMELING chorus section (replete with requisite Randy Palmer guitar pyrotechnics and GREAT vocal sounds by Bobby, who sounds like he's redlining the mic and distorting everything by singing too close to the device, it's REALLY cool, proof that low-budget recordings CAN be better in certain circumstances), “Into The Grave” is trawling, depressive dirge (“Death to you's the best friend you've ever had”), “Skinned” is the MOST pedal-to-the-metal track on the recording, siphoning and funneling the spirit of the Stooges (listen to Bobby's vocals!) and the MC5 through a Sabbath grinder in 02:09. FUCK!

I do realize this review has degenerated into a song-by-song gush of how absolutely mandatory this release is, but I can, in all frankness, state that each and EVERY track contained on this opus is a stone cold classic. Look at “Through The Gates With Hell”, with its blasphemous Lovecraftian imagery, “Touch The Sky”, with its suicidal, highly personal overtones “Look into my eyes, catch a glimpse of Hell/ But just to be free again, my soul I'd sell/ I'm a prisoner of myself, my fear and my need/ Just stick me with the death needle cause I'll never be free”, the sped-up interpretation of “Child Of Darkness” (imaginatively titled “Child Of Darkness II”), the whirling, messy white-knuckled garage-psych dervish of “Time Bomb” , which is TOTAL fucking licentious ‘Fun House' acid burnout (has Bobby ever sounded more Iggy than this?), the frenzied, semi-progressive “Nighttime Killers” (Geof putting in a STELLAR performance)….and the totally oddball instrumental “Axe To Grind” , which, fascinatingly enough, features a twin guitar dynamic that Geof rightly likens to Wishbone Ash writing music for a Spaghetti Western, although it also reminds me of the MASSIVE AFT album 'Automatic Fine Tuning' from 1976 and maybe Survivor's (not the lame AOR Survivor) 'All Your Pretty Moves' LP from the late ‘70s. GUITAR SOLO BLISS for all to be had here.

Take my word for it, this album gets EVERYFUCKINGTHING right. It bears ALL the hallmarks that made the ‘70s such an exciting period for heavy music- blaring HEAVINESS, a pervasively spooky atmosphere, MASTERFUL solos, immaculately written, sometimes mercurial/unpredictable songs, intuitive/sensitive/tasteful musicianship, poetic lyrics, and an unmistakable, transcendental je ne sais quoi that cloaks this release with an esoteric magic. There really aren't many pieces of music that are quite as timeless as this, and I am NOT exaggerating when I hold this up there with Pentagram, Black Sabbath, Atomic Rooster as the very CEILING of doom and horror metal…To this day there isn't much doom out there that can even BEGIN to approach the heaviness of “Serpent Venom”! Treat yourself to this album, it's a journey you won't regret.

May 17th, 2006