Bobby Liebling, the prodigal vocalist of the seminal metal band Pentagram, is a dichotomy, evoking the rock star persona of difficultness and stubbornness as well as the desire to be wanted and loved. Both of these personalities share one quality: the need to take each to the extreme. Pentagram has been around for thirty years, yet, in 2012, the band is hardly heard of – its 11,000 Facebook followers notwithstanding. The music is beautifully dark and cynical, with charging choruses and eerie lyrics, but the frontman who belts the elegies is impossible to deal with, so say his dozens of former band members.
It was also Liebling’s personality and refusal to compromise that cost Pentagram a recording contract that could have reaped them millions of dollars. It seems that, according to Last Days Here, that Pentagram was the band that could have been the string of Megadeths, Metallica, and Anthrax that crashed the scene in the early eighties.
The documentary offers a taste of Liebling’s stubbornness as indie producer Sean Pelletier attempts to revive Bobby for one last shot at fame. However, his attempt is often impeded by Liebling’s constant – and incredible – heroin and crack cocaine use. For these moments, the camera is unflinching as Bobby ignites his rocks with a butane lighter while used syringes clutter the coffee table and he proselytizes about the rash of parasites that live under his skin. (They don’t; the black discoloration is merely layers of suffocated skin, but he refuses to believe this.) And, while these moments and his hypochondria would be darkly comical with a light hearted soundtrack and an actor wearing an aluminum-foil helmet, here it’s visceral because we’re never sure whether or not he is lucid – and more astoundingly, how he can still be alive.
The copious amount of drug that Leibling injects, ingests, and imbibes is a stunning testament to the stamina of the body. It’s also a slow death that prophecies Last Days Here as an exercise is Schadenfraude that pits the sub-basement-of-his-parents dwelling Liebling against inevitability failure.
However, about halfway through, Bobby meets a girl, and the documentary momentarily wades in the waters of the “love conquers all” genre. While this is as short as Bobby’s initial tryst with a woman half his age, the infatuation exposes two sides of Bobby: the lonely young man searching for a home (something that explains why he still lives with his mother and father at the age of 54), but also a man who refuses to do anything half-heartedly.
And, it is with the latter reading of Bobby that a bit of admiration is due. Not for the drugs. Not for the parties. Not for this decisions. But for his abject dedication to whatever he puts his mind to – even if it’s living the rockstar dream of sex and drugs.
I don’t envy his trajectory and the demons that he’s conjured to torment him, but it’s fascinating to know that his determination to have Pentagram exist his way or no way at all ultimately kept him from being a star. In one sense, this is the perfect example of hubris. In another, it’s unfortunate that his existence followed the path it did – in part – because he didn’t fit a record label’s construction.
And, this is why the most sympathetic character in the film might be Sean Pelletier. At first, I wasn’t sure whether or not this man should be chastised for trying to make a buck off of a – literally – desiccating man. But as the film goes on, it seems that he does it for two reasons: first, two finally compile an album from a band that he loves; second, to save Bobby.
