Pentagram's unsung creative force
Guitarist Victor Griffin opens up about songwriting, Wino, and his personal faith.
Photo credit: Vibra Agency
Griffin caught up with Crib Notes over the weekend in anticipation of Monday's show at the Masquerade to discuss the ongoing legend of Pentagram.
Before you were in the band, Pentagram had the lifespan of a hardcore punk band in a lot of ways. Their first run was legendary, but there were only a few sets of demos from it. Was the 14 years between the band forming and the first album getting issued a matter of label support?
As far as the '70s version of Pentagram? I think they just did a lot of demos, and there were a couple of record deals that ended up falling through. You know, it was the typical rock ’n’ roll story, really. Sometimes there’s a falling out with members, so you end up with member changes and so forth. I think around ’78 or ’79 is when the ‘70s version of Pentagram sort of dissolved. When I met Bobby in ’81, there really hadn’t been a Pentagram for at least a couple of years. I had formed a band called Death Row right out of high school. I don’t know how much you know about the history of the band, but there’s what people now call the Death Row era. It was a band I started with a bass player in Tennessee. Subsequently, we met (drummer) Joe Hasselvander who had been in the ’78-’79 version of Pentagram. He joined us, and we began looking for a singer. That’s when he introduced me to Bobby. That band was finalized, as far as the members. We were Death Row until ’85. Actually, the first Pentagram album that ended up being released in 1985 was actually Death Row demos that we had recorded. At some point in ’85, we decided to be called Pentagram.
embed-1 So basically, Death Row is a band you formed that kind of got shoehorned into the Pentagram timeline?
We had been playing for a few years when Bobby presented the idea that there had been some press for Pentagram in the ‘70s. Perhaps if we used the name Pentagram, we could ride on the heels of that press. It was really a whole different animal than what the ‘70s Pentagram had been, tonally and stylistically to a certain extent. Death Row and beyond is when Pentagram became a heavier doom metal band than the ‘70s stuff. If you listen to the ‘70s stuff, really a lot of it is straight up rock ’n’ roll.
When you took over the Pentagram mantle, did you find that established acts like Venom or Anthrax were aware of the band’s past?
I am not really sure. We didn’t become aware of that until much later years. Back then, the only way people learned about unknown bands or underground bands was people trading cassette tapes. We began to learn about other bands that were doing what we were doing — bands like Trouble, Witchfinder General, Saint Vitus, and all these other bands that were doing heavier stuff. We didn’t know how many people were aware of Pentagram until years and years later.
Pentagram is like Death, the Detroit punks, in that the band happened and had a small following at the time. Decades later, the internet and record collectors allowed for this groundswell of support that made the band bigger than ever.
At shows now, we look out at the audience and see teenagers along with people our age or even older. At this point, we are covering a couple of generations. It’s pretty cool.
You mentioned Saint Vitus. You worked with Wino for a bit, right?
Wino and I were sort of partners in crime for a little bit from the early '80s to the mid '80s. We were good friends and hung out a lot. He was in the Obsessed and I was in Pentagram. We also, at one point, shared a band house together. Then around ’87 or so he moved out to L.A. and started Saint Vitus. In 2000 I started Place of the Skulls. Since then we recorded five or six albums and toured a lot. I still have that band going as well. So Wino temporarily joined Place of Skulls for one album in 2003, I think. We had sort of always contemplated working together. After we had worked together, we thought it might be better if we did our own thing. We both have so many ideas. We have different philosophies and things like that.
embed-2Place of the Skulls is considered by some to be a Christian band …
I never marketed it as a Christian band and put up that wall. Obviously, my spirituality is a big part of it. I wouldn’t say it’s a vehicle of that, because a lot of the stuff I write for Pentagram is the same thing … I’m the lead singer of Place of the Skulls, and Bobby is lead singer of Pentagram. That’s the division that separates the style of the two bands. Bobby brings his own style to the vocals on the stuff I write for Pentagram. Generally, I’ve written about 50 percent of the songs on the albums of Pentagram I’ve appeared on. Now with Greg (Turley) in the band, he’s a songwriter. A lot of it is evenly split between stuff Bobby writes or has written — he doesn’t really write a lot of new material but brings things up from older material we refurbish — and Greg and myself. The cool thing is it all kind of blends together seamlessly in the final product.
Pentagram, Mondo Drag, and Crawl play the Masquerade (Hell) on Mon., Mar. 14. $20. 8 p.m. 695 North Ave. www.masqueradeatlanta.com.