Weekly Agenda: Devil music and The Room

A lesson in metal band names: Any evil-sounding moniker you come up with now will probably start feeling really ridiculous in about six months. A year tops. No way around it—no matter how deeply entrenched in Scandinavian (or Wiccan or Tolkien or whatever) lore or even how truly metal it may seem to you and your six gloomy friends, you are doomed for band-name mediocrity. Because metal, in its blackened heart, as glorious as it is, as heavy and head-pounding as it can be, is a silly fucking genre when it comes down to it. And, anyway, Pentagram already beat you to it.

Perpetually weird/high frontman Bobby Liebling has had dibs on the name Pentagram since forming the doom-metal band in the early ’70s. Members have come and gone, a few several times over; Liebling (and his flowery, disco button-ups) has been the sole mainstay, despite being notoriously unstable. Good thing he stuck with it, though: The act, which plays its first Denver show in years next Wednesday, March 17, at the Marquis Theater, has seemingly found more success and acclaim in the latter part of this decade than the whole of its career. These things take time, we suppose. For Pentagram, it’s taken about 30 years and a lot of rehab.

Tommy Wiseau was lucky, sort of: The writer-director only had to wait around five years or so for his magnum opus, The Room, to reach the highs (lows?) of cult fanaticism. We expounded already a few weeks back, when it made its Denver première, on the incredible cinematic feat that is The Room. But, frankly, the film is so awesomely bad that it’s hypnotic. It screens again this weekend at Midnight Madness at the Esquire Theatre, and it’s hard to look away from its randomness, from its absolute ineptness. “Oh, hi, Mark.” Really, Tommy Wiseau, you thought that would make a good transition? Really? We have more ruminations on The Room here, including an interview with actor and best friend extraordinaire Greg Sestero. The Room, by the way, is also already taken. It was a mid-level post-punk band in the ’80s.