PROFANATICA-Interview with Drummer/Vocalist Paul Ledney

PROFANATICA formed when original members INCANATION left the band to form a Black Metal group. PROFANATICA formed in 1990, a time when Black Metal in America, globally as well, was not a developed genre. They were one of the first bands to wear corpse paint, in the States. PROFANATICA plays a raw and primitive style of Black/Death Metal with elements of doom. Vocalist/drummer, Paul Ledney said he felt Death Metal albums like POSSESSED’s “Seven Churches,” and demo material from the Texas band, NECROVORE, were in his opinion the earliest examples of Black Metal in America.

I caught up with Ledney at their stop in Austin, Texas as part of one of their longest tours. We discussed the re-release of their second album “Disgusting Blasphemies Against God,” as well as their most recent EP, “Wreathed in Dead Angels.” Additionally, we discuss how he feels about forming one of the first Black Metal bands in America and his viewpoint on what constitutes as USBM.

You’ve been on tour across the U.S. for a week or so. Is this the longest tour you’ve done? How is the tour going so far?

It’s going good. Maybe it is the longest. The other long tour we did was in Europe. It was like 30 dates. This one is a little longer by like a week. That one had zero dates off, so this one is better, but it’s hot now because we’re in Texas.

Throughout the tour you join forces with AGALLOCH, CLOAK, CANCERSLUG and MORBOSIDAD, who you are playing with tonight. How do you feel about playing with those bands?

The band that started us off was ONE MASTER from the East Coast. At of all of these bands nobody could do the whole stretch because it’s kind of long. I don’t like doing this. I would prefer someone to be with us the entire time, but this is what we had to do to make it work. Eventually, I’m going to unveil the list of bands that were a perfect fit, but they all ditched out at the last second with really fucking lame excuses. I’m just waiting for something crazy to happen and then I’ll put them all on blast. Their excuses were kind of embarrassing.

You will be touring in support of a reissue of your classic second album, 2010’s “Disgusting Blasphemies Against God”, which was re-released via Hells Headbangers on July 17^th. Will your set mostly consist of that album and last year’s Hells Headbangers release “Wreathed in Dead Angels” EP?

Because we signed on to do a big fest in Sacramento, we are doing the entire “Wreathed in Dead Angels” on there. We only picked one song from “Disgusting Blasphemies Against God,” “Fuck the Blood of the Lamb.” That’s the only one we are doing off that. We are doing a couple of “Wreathed in Dead Angels,” and some other stuff we never play live like “Altar of the Virgin Whore.” It came out really heavy live, so that’s a good one.

Some listeners found your debut full-length “Profanatitas de Domonatia” too clean and polished. However, the follow up, “Disgusting Blasphemies Against God,” is much rawer and crude, and the bass is more audible. What was your thought process like when you recorded this second album?

I kept getting tracks back from our guitar player. I kept saying the bass needs to be louder than the guitar. He kept saying it is louder than the guitar. I said to take that and double it. Make it really obnoxious and heavy. We wanted to make it a little more raw.

Your guitars on the album are minimalistic. Do you feel this is an important aspect of PROFANATICA and Black Metal in general?

Yes, one hundred percent. Our Black Metal is different than say the Euro Black Metal that has really frilly, I call effeminate guitar parts. Our stuff is hard from the beginning to the end, so it’s kind of abrasive. There is a heavy punk influence on U.S. Black Metal. People have heard me talk about that. Also, we are working overtime on our instrument to make it sound stripped down like that. Same formula as INCANTATION if you will, but we cut out the solos. It comes from the same source.

Your vocals have a savage scrap to this sound. How did you develop this style?

I was helping the band out on drums, but the singer… the way they presented it to me was this band was going to be like POSSESSED “Seven Churches” or NECROVORE and it wasn’t. I got behind the kit one day and brought the mic over and sang and played at the same time. My main influences are John (DePlachett) from NECROVORE from Texas and Jeff (Becerra) from POSSESSED.

I went back and re-read the chapter on you in the USBM book. You said you felt POSSESSED was Black Metal.

I think it was the start of U.S. Black Metal to shape it. It was a group effort. There were other guys growling and doing deep vocals. One of the demos I really liked when I first heard it was the DEATH demo, the very first one. “Summon to Die” and “Witch of Hell” had riffs that were incredibly evil! Another one after POSSESSED was “Abominations of Desolation” by MORBID ANGEL. It depends on who you ask, what the age of the person you’re asking and where they are located. When we met on our last Euro tour the guys from BEHERIT came. I was talking to them about how they felt about it. He said “Abominations of Desolation” was Black Metal already starting. Later, with the blast beats added to it, the grind element was all kind of evolving. For me that sucked the evil from all of those bands, that really fast blasting.

What do you think about where DEICIDE comes in? I mean, they are Death Metal, but they are evil and satanic.

We enjoyed the first one when it came out. A couple of friends from Florida filmed some of their live set from 1990. They were tight, heavy and shit was evil, but the posers talking in between songs we couldn’t get down with. Now that so much time has gone by now, it’s 2026, it’s a different time, so I guess it’s ok.

Do you see PROFANTICA as a completely different entity than INCANTATION? Being a founding member of INCANTATION, what did you bring, if anything, from that band?

More like the Black Metal look. I described the look that we have now back then, and John (McEntee) was not one hundred percent sold on that. Realistically, us and INCANTATION come from the exact same source. We kind of agreed to disagree.

Especially the doomy parts, were you inspired by your time in INCANTATION?

No, because we would both come up with similar riffs. Basically, looking it at now from back then, “Onward to Golgotha” is Black Metal. In my opinion, I told them this, they should have been wearing, at least, minimal war paint, black eye makeup, while doing that style because it would fit perfectly.

You guys wore corpse paint as early as 1992.

In ‘89/90 we did photo sessions. I don’t think we put it on when we played a couple of small shows with INCANTATION, but I wanted to.

How do you feel about being one of the God fathers of Black Metal in America? You started in ’90. There really weren’t any Black Metal bands in America at that time.

There wasn’t, we weren’t thinking about that when we started. We just did what we liked. Then enough time went by and now we are like “God fathers,” but we weren’t trying to be. We definitely knew other bands were not doing that. The Death Metal scene was kind of shocked with us back then. They thought we were crazy. We played a show and we weren’t kidding. We were one hundred percent into it then and we are now.

How do you feel about the scene in general? Where does PROFANATICA fit in?

Interesting question because we can play with Death Metal bands, Black Metal bands, Punk bands and we fit, so I kind of like that we’re in that situation. We don’t want to alienate anybody because in “Crux Simplex” and “Wreathed…” there are some D-beasts in there. We like that shit, so we put it in. Hopefully, our future stuff will be a continuation of that.

Your lyrics contain some of the most blasphemous lyrics found anywhere. How have you been able to write so much content on this theme?

That’s a good question. I’ll never run out of good ideas because we have The Bible, and that piece of shit is pretty thick. I can pick and choose and vent shit. I will say that “Wreathed in Dead Angels” were some of the most intricate lyrics I wrote. It was based on the last four stages on the cross. They all have double meanings. Not only do they have double meanings, they reference a song that is about to come up. That was a pain in the ass to do. I wanted to do it, and I thought maybe we should have standard blasphemies. I was like “no, I better finish it.” If you look at the lyrics, which I advise everybody to do, it’s pretty intricate. If you know anything about the stations of the cross you would be like, “Holy Shit! I don’t know how these guys did that.” So our career has been that to me just yelling the name of the song. For that it’s like a huge fuck you and your huge line of intricate lyrics that nobody is going to read anyway. It doesn’t sound Punk, but let’s say “Unto Us He is Born” has that kind of attitude that we don’t give a shit without being too silly about it.

You’re definitely vulgar and straight forward. Even more so than INCANTATION, who are blasphemous in their own way.

Yes, they are. We are pretty abrasive and in your face with the subject matter. It has very little nuance.

What is your perspective on Satan? Is your band just about Anti-Christian themes? Do you guys worship The Devil?

From what I can tell you, we don’t like having a god over the self. We are atheist types.