Profanatica - The Enemy of Virtue (2006)

I've always had a passion for ancient metal terrorists like Beherit, Sarcófago, Blasphemy, Hellhammer and other unholy raw black metal purveyors of sonic sacrilegious metal torment. However out of that bunch, New York based three piece Profanatica was the first I heard years ago and largely one of the best too.

Profanatica are infamously remembered as the band who made a video interview where the three corpsepainted members extensively talked about their distaste for all things Christian, while burning bible pages, giggling, making funny growly faces and eventually taking turns masturbating on the bible. Also from 1990 to 1992 they recorded three demos, one EP and a split release with Colombian based band, Masacre. Sometime in '92 they inked a deal with Osmose Productions and recorded a full-length album, but the master tapes were accidentally destroyed in the studio and the band broke up shortly thereafter. Paul, Brett and Aragon continued onwards with bands like Cyberchrist, Demonic Christ and Havohej when in 2001 Paul decided to reform Profanatica with a new line-up. Since then they've released three new full-length albums and a variety of old material in various formats.

Over the course of two CDs, 'The Enemy of Virtue' gathers together all of the bands early releases as well as the, 'Broken Jew' single from 2002, a Toten (pre-Profanatica band) rehearsal and a short live set from 2001. Although this release has been out a few years I only just recently bought it, and at least now I can finally toss those old CDr's I've had laying around for the past ten years or so.

The albums 29 tracks unfold in a mostly chronological manner with the exception of the Toten rehearsal, which is at the end of disc 1, but continues chronologically with the live set on disc 2. Although Profanatica fancied calling themselves the most blasphemous and evil black metal band ever a lot of these songs sound greatly influenced by the likes of Morbid Angel, Immolation and Incantation (which was actually formed by these three gentlemen and John McEntee in 1989) with the evil dissonant tremolo picked riff style and frantic drum work of black metal music. Some keyboards are very briefly used as intros/outros and some clearly spoken parts are present, but otherwise expect nothing but raging chaos.

The music is raw in character and is certainly not for those that have issues with harsh production jobs, but the quality does vary and slightly improve at times over the course of the compilation. As you might expect this under produced tone adds to these overly blasphemous tunes and makes them all of the more atmospheric and deliciously evil. The bands lyrics are also not that deep or poetic, just simple hate filled declarations of war, desecration and sodomy upon the Christian hordes. It should be noted though that a few songs do turn up more than once on this compilation, but thankfully they do vary in style and production. Lastly the booklet has the Profanatica story, pictures of all the release covers as well as various band photos, yes, including the legnedary photo of the band naked in the woods, slathered in corpsepaint, covered in blood with erect cocks to boot.

Profanatica isn't for everyone, but for those that have an interest in the most blasphemous roots of American black metal should look no further than these guys, because this is where it all started.