Recorded just moments before black metal turned into the new prog-rock for goths, Gorgoroth’s debut album Pentagram is often cited as the beginning of Norwegian black metal’s secondary phase but might be better viewed as the cult’s valedictory coda, a last corpse-twitch of the pure strain. Pentagram is a
30-minute blizzard of coruscating penetrative riffs and brain-shredding melotonic hooks with an extreme vocal style recalling the shrill, hissing malediction of a burning warlock, proving that Gorgoroth began as authentic practitioners of the lightless mayhem even as the barbarian copycat hordes sought to usurp it.