OG Blasphemy: An interview with Profanatica's Paul Ledney

Profanatica is widely recognized as the first United States black metal band. Building on the foundation set forth by Venom and Hellhammer, Profanatica has spewed a rambunctious attack on all that is holy since 1990. Their antics on and off stage gained the same notoriety as their hellish music. While their European counterparts posed for photographs with candelabras and swords, Profanatica did photos with blood dripping from their limp dicks. Grainy VHS from the early 90s interviews show them giggling as they rip pages out of a bible and eat them. In many ways, Profanatica is one of the metal bands to become a meme.

The recordings of what was to become their first album was destroyed by spiteful band mates before it was ever released in 1990 - read on to find out more about that fateful event. It was nearly two decades later that Profanatica birthed their first full length Profanatitas De Domanatias in 2007.

Rotting Incarnation Of God is Profanatica's upcoming full length, to be released via Season Of Mist on October 11. Love them or laugh at them, these old school blasphemers have only gained steam as they near three decades in the horror business. Their newest offering honors the original black metal forefathers with thick bass tones, sludgy guitar riffs, and song structures that are overall simple, but thoroughly evil. The guttural bellows and cacophonous blast beats are provided with primitive intent, courtesy founding member and band leader Paul Ledney. 

I spoke with Profanatica's Ledney over the phone a few weeks ago about the origin of black metal, Profanatica's new album, and raising hell the old school way. 

(Edited for length)

HELL-O Paul. The new album sounds brutal. How was the song writing process for this one?

It will start with one or two riffs. When we met in the studio, it was like 95% done. We tracked, and we made minor changes. And those changes happened really quick. There's no elusive parts. They were all like kind of final decisions. And for the mindset it just seems to happen. We get psyched, so we like...we're different than a lot of bands. But we believe in our material harder than other bands. There's no filler shit.

In the past though, I'm not gonna lie. I've left shit not finished...but this is the first one that's absolutely finished 100% the way we wanted it, and we fixed parts we weren't happy with. We fixed stuff and did it the way that we want. But it's easy not to do that, and say “alright, that's cool.” It still works, but this is like, what we wanted.

I'm glad that after three decades, you finally got one that's on the mark. Says something about persisting. How have you managed to stay evil and profane after three decades without coming off like a try hard?
I think we're coming from blaspheming. For me, it's more real. We're exactly the same guys on stage as off. It's just magnified on stage. For me, I've taken shit about this for a long time. Even the first interview we did in 1990...I told the guy, “We don't believe in anything supernatural.” So we're not pushing something that isn't there or pretending. I definitely took a lot of shit. Cuz back then they were like “What about if somebody becomes possessed?” And I'm like dude, you're kidding yourself. None of that shit has ever been proven. And now here we are like 30 years later. 

I guess the thing we believe in is 100% for real and that's telling everyone else that their shit sucks. Their organized religion. I guess we have like a base, we don't pray to anything fake or phony. And I guess that's why we stayed the same.

Tell us about your notorious first album, that was destroyed before it was released. What happened, in your own words?
UGH! That thing...I can't give you the names, but you can do the research. The people that I was playing with at the time destroyed it. They destroyed it using like a large magnet, as kind of like revenge. I guess I was being difficult to work with.

The true story of what happened was, we were really excited about it. When we did scratch guitar and bass the people that I had were not able to do it.

So the guy at the studio was like, “They came tonight” and I'm like “How did it go?” Cuz I was there most nights. And I'm like, “How much did they get done?” This shit's really easy to play, I felt, always. They were like “Look, these guys aren't good. You need to pay somebody to come and just do the parts.”

Sounds like you needed some black metal session musicians! 
But guys were really hard to find back in the day that got it. These guys got it, for sure, but they weren't that qualified to do it. And then things got really tense. And one day when I walked in there, the engineer was like “I don't know what happened but this thing is destroyed....it went from really quiet, to almost not there, to really loud, and it kept dipping and getting lower.”

It was only years later that I found out how they did it. So, looking back I should have done whatever...cuz I was done at that point. Looking back, I should have just did whatever I had to to finish it. Rewrite stuff and make sure that it came out. I feel like if I did that, it would have been stronger for US black metal, I think.

I saw one of those old bandmates, Aragon Amori, died in 1996. Were you on better terms?
We kind of fixed it a little bit. And yeah, I did a couple favors for him. Which was cool I guess. And the other guy I had seen because I had played with his band.

Were you raised in a certain religious household?
Not overly...but, like, and it wasn't really strict...I did get kicked out of my first religion class that I was ever in.

How old were you?
Eight. Because I was asking about Adam and Eve and I kept bringing up the cavemen. I was like “So were Adam and Eve cavemen?” and they were like “No, that was something different.” And then growing up, I saw that it's just like a business, the organized opinion.

I see you wear religious looking garb for your photographs and live shows, and also the new album cover. Where did that come from?
Yeah, kind of. The live stage outfits are like, not male or female. So it's like we kind of went through sketching shit out to where I got it right now.

Gender neutral! How progressive.
Yeah kind of, like the church is very against women. Like, women can't be priests or do this or that. So it's unnamed, kind of. 

But our live show, for me, I say more energy is better. For us, there's nothing worse than a band rips on vinyl, and you go and see them but they're kind of standing there going through the motion. It's almost like too many to name and there's only a handful that don't do that.

You have a big tour coming up to support the new album. What are audiences in store for?
I think just energy and that feeling that we go hard. And kind of get into our own stuff. … If you look at old tapes of bands, like old Slayer was really, they got into their own shit and kind of backed it. They went hard on their own shit. I want to say we're one of the tighter bands that do this style.


What's your opinion of the current metal scene?
All the bands that we play with that are the opening bands are cool guys. And I think this like a weird thing and I always go back to it and talk about it, but for us, the first death metal was black metal. That Sodom EP was black metal, the Hellhammer one was black metal of course, Seven Churches, the first Morbid Angel Abominations Of Desolation, so a lot of what I call black metal is not what it turned into. So there's like Euro style and US style. 

But the first bands when we started...There was us, Blasphemy, Rotting Christ, Impaled Nazarene, Beherit, Archgoat. None of those bands played that folky Euro style. That shit, I would never ever put on for my enjoyment. I always enjoyed Hellhammer, Frost and Bathory, but for me it came from Venom. That kind of timeline...it branched all off, and people started copying the later versions of Bathory, the viking style, and that's fine. It's just not what I call real black metal.

What's one of your favorite concert memories from back in the day?
It was always kind of mayhem back in the day...there was one show in Rhode Island. It was some sort of Relapse fest. I don't know why but we played at noon. We played with Goreapohobia, Immolation and Incantation, all those type of bands. Nobody really knew our shit. We had a huge container of blood. And we got stopped with it going into the club. So all we could do was, we had these earth worms we put on a bible. The video is out there's it pretty raw, kind of evil. We started playing and the place was packed, and toward the end of the set there were there were maybe three people. Our bass player took his shirt and dumped it in the blood overnight and all morning and just put it on. The place really smelled horrible. So for back then people were really shocked...I always thought our shit was more real. And it kind of came from this, not really sounding, but this punk sort of attitude where we really didn't give a shit.

What did you think of your performance back then?
I was like “This is fucking great.” We thought it was funny.

Order Profanatica's new album Rotting Incarnation of Christ via Seaon Of Mist. And see them on tour, if you're near Texas, or in Europe:

October 4 @ Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4 - Houston, TX
November:

1 - Leipzig, Germany - Mörtelwerk
2 - Berlin, Germany - Nuke Club
3 - Rostock, Germany - Zwischenbau
4 - Arhus, Denmark - HQ
5 - Hamburg, Germany - Markthalle
6 - Kassel, Germany - Goldgrube
7 - Antwerp, Belgium - Het Bos
8 - Dordrecht, Netherlands - Bibelot
9 - Paris, France - Winter Rising Fest
10 - Rennes, France - Mondo Bizarro
11 - Bilbao, Spain - Edaska Pub
12 - Barcelona, Spain - Rocksound
13 - Toulouse, France - Les Pavillions Sauvages
14 - Como, Italy - Centrale Rock Pub
15 - Pescara, Italy - Scumm
16 - Naples, Italy - First Floor Club
17 - Bologna, Italy - Alchemica Club
18 - Linz, Austria - Kapu
19 - Zurich, Switzerland - Ebrietas
20 - Nürnberg, Germany - Golden Nugget
21 - Prague, Czech Republic - 007 Club
22 - Gliwice Mrowisko, Poland - Black Silesia Fest
23 - London, England - Amersham Arms
24 - Athens, Greece - Temple