Bedemon

Not quite a Pentagram "side project", BEDEMON existed from the years 1973 to 1979 in Arlington, VA and shared a few members of Pentagram within its ranks. It was mostly Randy Palmer's trip (he was the main songwriter for the group). He later joined Pentagram as a second guitarist for about a year, but even after leaving Pentagram, he still recorded with the various other members as Bedemon. Regarded by many to be the original true U.S. doom band, BEDEMON released their first-ever set of all-new material on August 24th, 2012 in Continental Europe, September 5th in the UK and in October 23rd in the US on Svart Records. Inspired by the goriest of fright films and the most menacing of music at the time, guitarist/composer/journalist/author Randy Palmer churned out the very first doom songs written on North American soil. This understated innovator recruited the help of his band mates, PENTAGRAM co-founders Geof O’Keefe (drums) and Bobby Liebling (vocals) as well as schoolmate Mike Matthews (bass). Throughout the 1970s, the band recorded numerous sinister, doom-drenched slabs of metallic gold — Black Sabbath were Palmer’s idols — that illegally floated around on sub-standard bootlegs for decades. Finally, in 2004 to much fanfare, these rough, never-intended-for-public recordings were collected, repaired and released as Child of Darkness: From the Original Master Tapes. Since then, BEDEMON has seen a surge in popularity due to their intertwined history with the original PENTAGRAM, in addition to their music being featured in the critically acclaimed award-winning documentary, Last Days Here (Sundance Selects/914 Pictures), chronicling the life and times of PENTAGRAM and original BEDEMON vocalist Bobby Liebling. Literally a decade in the making, BEDEMON now proudly issues their sophomore release, Symphony of Shadows. Shortly after completing recording of the basic rhythm tracks in April 2002, band founder Randy Palmer was involved in a tragic car accident and passed away in August of that year. O’Keefe, Matthews and new vocalist Craig Junghandel worked with recording engineer Shawn Hafley over the next decade to finish the project both in tribute to Randy and also because they felt so passionate about the strength of the material; the result is nine bone-crushingly heavy slices of pure 70s-flavored doom metal. The official site for Bedemon is www.bedemon.com Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.