Havohej- "Age of Uncreation"

Havohej – “Table of Uncreation” full length

Connecticut USA 

Black metal/experimental noise

 Havohej is a name you should well be familiar with if you’re an old school black metaller. And if you’re a newer fan, I invite you to join in on the blasphemy.

 Having worked with several local tri-state bands including Abomination, Revenant, Incantation and Toten as well as GG Allin’s backup act Connecticut Cocksuckers, Paul Ledney helped herald the second wave of death and black metal with a band called Profanatica, from which emerged this side project a couple years later. Many early 90s black metal bands who practiced the style known as primitivism (Beherit, Impaled Nazarene, Impiety, etc) decided to progress and change their sound in one way or another.

 While this happened Ledney traveled in the opposite direction with Havohej, building on the primitivism of past releases like “Unholy Darkness and Impurity”, “Dethrone the Son of God” and “Black Perversion” to create soundscapes as bleak and lifeless as they were black and blasphemous. It has been a full decade since Ledney first started experimenting with this approach with “Kembatinan Premaster” as he’s still very much involved with Profanatica.

 “Kembatinan Premaster” sounded like the transition point between early black metal and the ambient, relentlessly draconian environments generated on “Table of Uncreation”. Although the new recording mostly presents an impression of picking up where he previously left off, Ledney almost completely abandons structure in favor of something closer to pure hell than most bands from the tri-state area could approach by traditional means. 

On this album Havohej is more likened to the Swedish experimental black metal/noise project Abruptum than Deicide and Dark Funeral and so on. I’m also thinking of Fenris’ (Dark Throne) ambient noise project Neptune Towers. But in some ways I feel Havohej actually comes close to surpassing those projects in terms of undiluted black-hearted malevolence. 

The guitars, bass, drums and vocals often take a back seat to overwhelming droning cacophony that sounds almost impossible to create with modern instruments. Ledney uses a strange kind of polarity to get his point across here, a polarity pitting musicianship against relentless noise that drones on so relentlessly it begins to sound nonhuman. It’s almost as if he makes a conscious effort to erode all musical structure and replace it with the most extreme form of musical pandemonium one can capture on record. 

It’s damn near horrifying to think of the unmusical potential that can be reached if Ledney continues in this direction. If you think you have the stomach for it hear it for yourself. –Dave Wolff 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063912931897 Bandcamp: https://havohej.bandcamp.com/ 

Myspace: https://myspace.com/havohejofficial/ 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4Svv557NlcxW0Kykb54MRP 

Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/us/artist/77093762