Profanatica

A band on a mission from the aether to convert black metal back toward primally antisocial art.

Tormenting Holy Flesh
Osmose
1992

Production: Morbid garage on both sides, with the latter being clearer.
Review: The east coast blasphemers of sublime artistic devices found within the most degrading and lowest motivations of the human soul as connectors of desire, in flagrant violation of taste and bourgeois ethos open this recording with searing howls and the minimalist songs they fashion from fragments of concept bent into self-resolving poetic antagonism. In solid tones as well as the lightly picked speeding tremelo that defines in fuzztone some of their lengthy phrases, cadence paces different emotions of various aspects to each song, staggering cyclic interchanges between riff variations to introduce schism and sickeningly convenient resolution.

Tracklist:

Profanatica:
1. Spilling Holy Blood (1:58)
2. Final Hour Christ (1:00)
3. Weeping in Heaven (1:58)
4. I Arose (8:03)
Masacre:
5. Sangrieta Muerte (7:08)
6. Morbida Implosion (4:07)
7. Decadencia (1:50)
8. Brutales Masacres (5:12)
9. Ola de Violencia (3:56)
Length: 35:14

havohej/masacre split 1992 osmose
Copyright © 1992 Osmose

Guitar defines the space utilized by each phrase with a dominant presence in rhythm and melodic articulation in songs that are composed in counterpoint as fragments of melody becoming sensible and resolving through making oppositional tiers of modal values in harmonic suspension created by their imposition of various intervals in otherwise linear progressions, in effect opening holes in harmony which match similar devices in contrapuntal and recursively designed phrases, moving music by pure melodic "hook" defining both space of instantiation and development of narrative. The fleet footed and dynamically variant percussion of Paul Ledney clamps around the wandering exploration of each song, throbbing and pausing to open spaces for change.
Where songs often work with a dominant theme pair, Profanatica invent those from a central concept in shape of song which effectively defines the range in which its phrases must exist and which transitions they must imply. Concepts diversely range from slowly building theme and epic downturn into a coreless, soulless renaissance to apostate energies channeled into feral rhythm and nothing more. Consistently avantgarde in their assault on frameworks of perception and appreciation of art, these four tracks expound with more than meets the eye on what was then a new direction for black art in metal.
Masacre, destined to be forgotten as an above average on a disc next to those who defined the sound for much of a genre to follow, put together here their sparse works of basic death/grind that will connect glimpses of intellect rising with standard methods of form completion, creating music that lumbers where it could glide and as a result, often fails as a whole to keep the energy it inventively generates and nurtures. With shouted guerrilla vocals and basic instrumentation throughout, this half of the album demonstrates its heights early and then failing to match beginnings with directions of any intellectual sustenance, fades into the genericism of the genre at that time.

"Live"
Necroscope
2001

Production: Reasonable live capture via mobile unit.
Review: A seemingly uncut blast of live Profanatica, this album captures the songs made classic on other releases in their least coordinated and most inspired improvisational state, and for this deserves inclusion on the shelf of any discerning librarian of metal. Hear them tune up, screw up, ask if the music is "heavy" but most of all, play the abstracted and inverted tunes which resemble discarded thoughts from a perverse classical symphony assembled in a destruction of all order through reduction to the lowest elements from the highest.

Tracklist:

1. (3:40)
2. (0:36)
3. (1:53)
4. (4:27)
5. (0:39)
6. (2:29)
7. (3:22)
8. (1:27)
9. (2:14)
10. (2:12)
11. (3:54)
12. (3:15)
13. (3:46)
14. (1:15)
15. (1:23)
16. (4:00)
17. (4:05)
18. (0:39)
19. (3:47)
20. (4:28)
21. (3:54)
22. (0:20)
23. (2:53)
24. (4:44)
25. (0:52)
26. (2:26)
27. (1:58)
28. (2:04)
29. (1:01)
Length: 73:53
profanatica live 2001
Copyright © 2001 Necroscope

Violent in execution and minimalist in elements, this music grinds in an elite method of positioning similar structures in conflict through tonal anchoring, allowing the adept caffeinized pocket drumming of insane progenitor and architect Paul Ledney to propel assemblies of alienated progressions in digital configuration of power chords and twin primal motions and combinations, offset by comfortingly vast noise and faded out shrieking. For those who wish a vision of a dress rehearsal in hell, this sure sounds like it.

Collection
Warhammer
2001

Production: Fluctuation between reasonable demo and bathroom bootleg.
Review: The acerbic linear howl from hell that is the work of Paul Ledney and company is collected here from a range of sources, including the material from the Profanatica split with Masacre and various 7" and demo tapes. Minimal packaging and basic declarations direct focus appropriately to the music within, which bearing the strange variations of time and the heavy burden of ambient transitional material, presents this band in the most informative light yet.

Tracklist:

1. Raping Of Angels
2. Final Hour of Christ
3. Of Pestilence
4. Scourging and Crowning
5. Weeping In Heaven
6. Weeping In Heaven
7. Heavenly Father
8. Spilling Holy Blood
9. Final Hour of Christ
10. Weeping In Heaven
11. I Arose
12. As Tears Of Blood Stain The Altar of Christ
13. Crucifixion Worms
14. Once Removed Savior
15. Mary
16. Jehovah Fading
Length: 46:52

profanatica collection 2001 on warhammer records
Copyright © 2001 Warhammer

Abrupt tormented riffs singe and dive, seething in the hissing deconstruction of their own forms before resurrecting in a flash and charring. Using the simplest, often most jarringly aesthetic, songwriting ideas possible this band of deranged individuals create short but transmissively rhythmic works, opening vectors into the listener with natural motions and sudden instantly logical transitions with an emphasis on primal riffs and unchartable screaming noise. A turbulent redux and cyclic winnowing and return both mixes ideas and keeps them jarringly separate, moving the listener between themes as if rooms in an apocalyptic funhouse.
Like most black metal, Profanatica aim for the sleeping mind of the human machine and saturate it with a bloodlike rhythm while a structure twists and regenerates in front of the ears. Once a continuity has been established, songs create spaces of introduction while flashing to final conflicts and resolutions within the motif of the value structure of each song, in concept and creation. Intermediary wanderings fade into an exploration of the dark underpinnings of each poetic mechanism like a drunken lazy genius deconstructing his enemies, slight motions leading to symphonic collaboration of natural forces toward change.
The works here chronicle this band from a youth of abandon to songs honed and handled to smoothness and absolute application to function alone that differentiated this band among other counterpoint atonal metal composers. Early versions of Havohej and Profanatica classics, in their often punkish or sprawlingly black metal personae, cut to the vein of the spirit pushing an unlikely quest through in a belief in its art. These artists were an inspiration to many European bands and remain legendary in the occupied American states.