PROFANATION - Ultra-Noise Warfare

Hey folks, how’s it going? I’ve been going through a bit of a back-and-forth psychologically lately. On top of working way too much, all kinds of outside jobs have been wearing me down, both physically and mentally. And dude, the heat just won’t fucking let up! It’s still hovering around 40°C here. That’s my handicap, anyway... Right, what were we talking about? Death metal.

Of course, death metal is one of the few things in this world that makes me grateful for what my ears get to hear. Thanks to my man Ozan, my German soldier, I got such a killer pass that I was reminded once again that getting buried underground isn’t actually such a bad thing. Standing before us are France’s young PROFANATION, who have devoured death metal whole. Released by Iron Bonehead Productions, "Ultra-Noise Warfare" is the kind of album that spends roughly 30 minutes showing you exactly what it means to come out of a bandsaw in pieces.

From the very first minutes, you realize that the guitar riffs have one purpose and one purpose only. There’s no fancy showboating here, no unnecessary technical gymnastics, no “look what we can do” bullshit. The vocals also occasionally push beyond the boundaries of classic death metal and drift toward black metal territory. That takes the album’s aggression up several notches. Because what PROFANATION are offering you isn’t an atmospheric journey or a peaceful musical experience. It’s chaos!

And not the mild kind, either. The speed of the grindcore vein inherited from bands like Terrorizer and Doom, the D-beat madness, and the sheer uncontrolled aggression fit naturally into PROFANATION’s death metal backbone. But it’s not just about speed. That physical, crushing, almost war-machine-like momentum you get from the likes of Archgoat and Revenge has seeped into every corner of the album as well. Once that rusty Swedish death metal guitar filter is thrown over the whole thing, what emerges is a sound that is both primitive and brutally heavy. In other words, these guys have loaded grindcore’s speed, war metal’s savagery, and Swedish death metal’s filth into the same truck and dumped the whole fucking load on us.

It’s obvious that the guitars are tipping their hats to the old masters of death metal. But they’re not doing it for the sake of nostalgia. They take that old-school riffing approach and fuse it with grindcore/punk energy to create their own form of attack. That’s why, at a certain point, the album stops being something you merely hear and becomes something physical. Especially when they slow the tempo down a little, that weight becomes even more apparent. In the fast sections, it’s a tank rolling over you; when it slows down, it parks on top of you.

There’s also a very simple reason why the songs are kept short: to start up, rip your fucking head off, and get out without unnecessarily prolonging the pain. At 27–30 minutes, the album’s runtime is absolutely perfect for this. PROFANATION know what they have to say, and once they’ve said it, they don’t hang around and drag things out.

If you like dirty, aggressive, vicious bands such as Repulsion, Conqueror, and Archgoat, and if you enjoy hearing death metal, black/war metal, grindcore, and punk genres grind against each other until they spark, "Ultra-Noise Warfare" is right up your alley.

Don’t look for subtlety here. Elegance died a long time ago.

PROFANATION just fucking attacks head-on (I was going to write something else here, but whatever...).

An album like a bulldozer.

profanationband.bandcamp.com 
ironbonehead.de
ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com 
facebook.com/ironboneheadproductions