After tackling the Royal Arch Blaspheme album a couple of months ago it is time to concentrate on one half of that duo, Paul Ledney’s Profanatica. Despite a huge array of material since the New Yorkers first spewed their blasphemous brand of USBM like a spear in Christ’s side back in 1990, this is only their second official studio album. Make no mistake this is one sick piece of work too, it is only for the hardiest of extremists both musically and by theme, the latter of which makes even Christian Death seem like they may as well pack their bags and head off and join the church choir. The album artwork is both beautiful and obscene although thankfully there are no naked shots of the band members, members on display and the song titles even had me blushing when MSN messenger displayed them on various listens of the album.
From what I can gather the line up here consists of Ledney, Gelso who rejoins again and session player Alex Cox (not the movie director duh) and there is a scheduled live date in September with Night Bringer and Krieg which would be fantastic for anyone in the New Jersey area of the States. Between them they have forged a 40 minute overture of absolutely horrendous and hellacious noise that is at times so unremitting it has the power to make you feel physically sick. That is no hyperbole if you listen to it in the wrong conditions and suffer panic attacks it has the power to bring them on! ‘Black Cum’ gushes forth with flattening bass sound and a spring like tempest uncoiling into a battering salvo of drum percussion. It sounds like everything is turned up to the max with the guitars spiralling a little quieter in the mix. This is all devastated when the unholy vocal retch comes over the top spewing out a lyrical vomit that I am not even sure if I want to be party to. It would be easy to say that this continues for the rest of the album and use words like bestial and demonic especially when the vocal oration is exactly so as we are thrown into the more sludge laden hell of ‘Pious Piece Of Shit.’ It is all particularly barbaric in execution and the music is hammered out without remorse. Nuances do seep through out the quagmire though, a spiralling solo here, a vocal pattern there, giving it all distinction and making the music far from one dimensional.
I do wonder how much time was taken on the recording and sure it’s an interesting tale, perhaps it was all flung out in one take but can you even create such a raw sound that easily or do you have to practice what you preach to wring out such low-end clamour? I do also find myself laughing at some of the song titles, intent or not aside, the over the top ‘Smashing Religious Fucking Statues’ makes you wonder just what was going through their heads to come up with that particular one. The more guitar driven riffing of ‘Fuck The Blood Of The Lamb’ at the half way point does detract a bit from the low-end battering and with the vocal spew it sounds almost like a mature song by this bands standards. Massive apocalyptic gong like sounds resound on the slower but no less vile ‘Covered In Black Shit’ which really sounds like it has been shat out the bowels of hell.
Climaxing and impaling on ‘Angel With Cock’ this is one of those albums that really is a harrowing listen. I guess that is the appeal of it and listening to it intensively half a dozen times for reviewing has me somewhat questioning my sanity and wondering just what sort of fucked up mood I would need to be in to give this a further spin; something I probably won’t be doing in a particular hurry. I could finish this review with a clichéd phrase like ‘If you are false….’ but as the last track fades into the distance all I can hear is a buzzing in my ears and possibly the sound of Christ weeping. Now it’s time to dig out ‘Reality Asylum’ by Crass and really finish him off!
http://www.myspace.com/profanatica
