by Niklas Göransson

By the mid-2000s, fuelled by discipline and relentless drive, Hells Headbangers had emerged as a powerhouse of US underground metal.  In the years that followed, the label became home to bands like Profanatica, Inquisition, Acid Witch, and Midnight.

 

CHASE HORVAL: Nothing was planned out; none of us took business classes or any such shit. Back in the early years, we regarded Hells Headbangers as a total hobby; I didn’t even know you could make a living from underground metal. First, I worked at various restaurants like Pizza Hut – then I went to college and studied electrical engineering, all the while doing the label on the side.

Chase, along with his brothers Eric and Justin Horval, launched the online mail-order in October 2000. Two years later, Hells Headbangers became a label.

While Chase attended college, Eric and Justin worked in the print industry, enabling them to produce all their CD booklets, vinyl inserts, and LP jackets in-house. Until 2005, the entire label and mail-order operation was run out of the Horval family home.

CHASE: My father was quite supportive in the sense that he eventually said, ‘Enough, you guys need to get the fuck outta here!’ He helped us find a place of our own. Personally, I had zero interest in buying a property at that age, especially with my brothers. I’m definitely not a roommate type of guy. So, our dad forced us out – but in a constructive way.

The brothers ended up purchasing a house in Medina, Ohio – the same rural suburb of Cleveland where their parents lived.

CHASE: Medina is a spot I’d never have chosen personally. It was kind of out of the way from going to shows in Cleveland and other things that might’ve actually benefited Hells Headbangers. Our house had a pond out back and all this fucking yard work to do – but at least we could focus on the label. So, the three of us moved in together.

Three twenty-something metalheads in the same house sounds like pandemonium.

CHASE: We had some issues and got under each other’s skin, for sure. It’s always been like that; I once shot Eric with a BB gun and sent him to hospital, and he knocked out my front teeth on another occasion – all kinds of stupid-ass nonsense. But such is the beauty of being brothers: we could be throwing fists one moment, and two hours later, it didn’t mean shit.

 

In 2006, the hit counter of Hells Headbangers’ website stood at almost 440,000 visits. The starting page heralded the coming of the label’s seventh CD release, NUNSLAUGHTER’s “Fuck the God in Heaven” – featuring their younger brother Craig ‘Reaper’ Horval on bass and guitar.

The selection of vinyl records, described as ‘THE TRUE FORMAT OF METAL!’, comprised more than 1,250 titles. Plenty of death metal, some grindcore and old-school metal, but mostly underground black metal.

CHASE: By then, the label was consuming my life. Like, ‘Oh man, I gotta make a decision.’ I finally pulled the trigger in 2006, resigning from my engineering job – which sucked because I’d already done the whole college thing and was on a career path. ‘Am I just gonna abandon this now, after all that time and money?’ However, things worked out in terms of the skillset I acquired, so it wasn’t a total waste.

Having gone full-time, Chase dedicated every waking moment to the label. Justin would come back from his day job in the afternoon, whereas Eric worked the night shift.

CHASE: We had the whole twenty-four-hour cycle covered and could answer emails, process orders, and uphold our longstanding reputation for being fast and reliable. All three of us are complete workaholics – we have minimal interests besides working on the label. That’s also a product of our father pushing a lot of his projects on me and my brothers as kids; he worked us like dogs, to be honest.

 

Another significant milestone occurred in 2006 – the birth of Hells Headbangers’ collaboration with PROFANATICA.

CHASE: Still to this day, I think they are the best US black metal band. Obviously, there’s VON and a handful of others, but PROFANATICA was as extreme and fucked up as it got. Back then, not many locals listened to BEHERIT, BLASPHEMY, ARCHGOAT, and PROFANATICA. Now everyone loves them, but there were literally five of us here at the time.

After a brief resurgence five years earlier, PROFANATICA had been largely inactive. The band’s mastermind, drummer Paul Ledney, got married in 2001 and then started a printing company.

CHASE: Paul Ledney owned a small business printing shirts for sports teams and other normal day-job-type items. I contacted him through the company email but never heard back. Then I found Paul on Myspace, which is absolutely hilarious – and that’s how we did all of our deals. He’d begun selling off leftovers from his old label, Necroscope.

Paul Ledney founded Necroscope in 2000 and released an EP with HAVOHEJ – a solo project he started after PROFANATICA dissolved – the same year. Then, in 2001, he put out a BURNING WINDS EP, “The Flame of Lucifer”, and two PROFANATICA titles: a live CD, “Live”, and a picture LP compilation by the name “Collection”.

CHASE: “Collection” didn’t cover all of their material, like the “Broken Jew” EP. Eventually, I asked Paul, ‘Hey man, can we do a proper PROFANATICA compilation?’ He turned out to be really cool and easy to work with. Our ‘contract’, if you wanna call it that, consists of a tiny Myspace printout; I should still have it. Typical Ledney. It was a really loose deal, which is how we like to do things.

 

In July 2006, Hells Headbangers issued “The Enemy of Virtue” as both a two-disc CD and a double LP.

What an insane first release to commemorate the alliance. It contains all the early-90s treasures, such as the “Putrescence of…” and “Broken Throne of Christ” demos, the “Weeping in Heaven” EP, and PROFANATICA’s tracks from their “Tormenting Holy Flesh” split with MASACRE.

Additionally, it features “Broken Jew”, four rough mixes from the aborted 1992 full-length, one previously unreleased song called “Passion of a Liar”, a 2001 live set, and a rehearsal recording of Paul Ledney’s pre-PROFANATICA project TOTEN.

CHASE: Paul provided some old photos, but that compilation required a lot of digging. A couple of local friends contributed; Don of the Dead (NUNSLAUGHTER) cleaned up the audio and got it properly formatted. I also remember Dave from VOID MEDITATION CULT helping out with some stuff, too; he’s a huge PROFANATICA fan.

How long did it take?

CHASE: I don’t know… probably half a year, which isn’t too bad by today’s standards. I give full credit to Yosuke of Nuclear War Now! for his extensive work with re-issues; not all musicians have this archived material readily at hand, and Paul was definitely no exception. So, they gotta go digging for it and that’s only so exciting. People tend to put it off, I’ve noticed.

As have I. One of the most challenging aspects of producing a printed publication is getting middle-aged metalheads to look for and then scan high-resolution images of old analogue photos.

CHASE: In some ways, it’s easier to do a brand-new studio album as opposed to having to unearth all this ancient shit, clean it up, and get the best-sounding material. We found it pretty annoying, to be honest. But Paul loved the result. Then he pitched me a HAVOHEJ ten-inch, as well as the PROFANATICA full-length he was working on.

 

Following “The Enemy of Virtue”, Hells Headbangers released PROFANATICA’s debut album, “Profanatitas De Domonatia”, in May 2007.

CHASE: That was the most interest we’d seen in a Hells Headbangers title to date; I recall getting flooded pretty hardcore. We didn’t have the current site – which is quite dated by modern standards – and were still on the old page. There weren’t any technical problems but keeping everything up-to-date required a lot of manual maintenance.

“Profanatitas De Domonatia” was a pleasant surprise – filthy guitar tone, ripping basslines, and Paul Ledney’s vocals never sounded better. A near-perfect storm, if not for the utterly perplexing decision to use a drum machine.

CHASE: Yeah, an odd choice indeed. I’m trying to think… Paul didn’t mention it right away when turning it in; he probably wanted to see if anyone would notice. My guess is that he simply didn’t have the time to keep up to speed with his playing. Paul wasn’t really practising the drums as much and focused on his family.

Besides running a small business, Paul Ledney had two children. He told me that a large portion of “Profanatitas De Domonatia” was written by guitarist John Gelso, who composed much of PROFANATICA’s iconic 90s material, such as “Weeping in Heaven”.

CHASE: I think Gelso prepared those songs on his own. If Paul had said, ‘Nah, I don’t wanna do a full-length’, John would’ve used it for THE ROYAL ARCH BLASPHEME instead. I don’t know if you heard his solo project, but we did two albums which sound pretty much exactly like the PROFANATICA debut. I’d have to confirm with Ledney, but I bet that whole record was a product of Gelso pushing Paul into doing it.

Did you get any complaints about the drums?

CHASE: There was a bit of a… I wouldn’t say backlash, but there were certainly opinions expressed about it. We didn’t actually come out and say in the promo material, ‘Hey, this one has a drum machine’, but people pieced it together. Actually, the reason the LP was out of print for five years is that I thought they were gonna re-record the whole thing with an analogue kit.

Are you generally a fan of re-recorded albums?

CHASE: Not really, no; I tend to avoid them. GORGOROTH made one, and it’s fucking horrendous. Didn’t SODOM re-record “In the Sign of Evil”? Never bothered to fuck with that. But as a big PROFANATICA fan, I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ However, this would be more of… I don’t know, a bonus disc for something. The PROFANATICA debut is highly revered now, new kids are getting into it, so it’s probably best left alone.

Simultaneously, Hells Headbangers began working with Ledney’s side-project, HAVOHEJ.

In early 1993, Desacration of God Productions released a HAVOHEJ EP titled “Unholy Darkness and Impurity”. Rather than metal, the music is a crude form of experimental black noise.

Soon after, PROFANATICA’s original guitarist, Brett Makowski, contacted Paul to see if he wanted to jam. Makowski joined HAVOHEJ, and upon signing with Candlelight Records, they re-recorded the “Tormenting Holy Flesh” songs, as well as Paul’s material for PROFANATICA’s botched debut album. Candlelight released the result, “Dethrone the Son of God”, on CD in May 1993.

In August 2007, Hells Headbangers released a licensed LP version of “Dethrone the Son of God”, as well as a CD reissue. Then came two HAVOHEJ EPs – “Tungkat Blood Wand” in November and “Hornbook Seytan” the following year. Both featured new material in the project’s original style.

CHASE: I wanna say the first LP pressing of “Dethrone the Son of God” sold out really fast, within a month or so. But when we did those ten-inches, some people went, ‘What the fuck is this?’ They thought it would be like “Dethrone the Son of God”, which was essentially meant for the destroyed PROFANATICA debut. But the true HAVOHEJ sound is gradually taking hold; nowadays, people regard it highly and the demand feels similar.

Paul Ledney argues that the black metal scene might have looked differently if PROFANATICA had completed their September 1992 studio session. With an early-90s album released by Osmose Productions, the band would likely be far more renowned today. However, the recording was erased before completion, causing PROFANATICA to fade into obscurity for the next decade.

As such, it feels almost like cosmic justice that they have raised their profile significantly in recent times – over thirty years later.

CHASE: Paul took an extended break, only to hit the ground running. Nowadays they tour a lot compared to the past, when it was just one show every other year. It’s actually weird seeing him going to Chile, Finland, and so on. ‘Dude, you don’t even like to fly.’ He’s totally trying to do the touring thing now.

 

An archived August 2009 version of the Hells Headbangers website shows almost 1,700 vinyl titles, a gigantic selection of CDs, as well as ‘zines, patches, pins, and so forth. By then, all three brothers had gone full-time.

CHASE: Justin was the second one to come aboard, about a year after me. He is Hells Headbangers’ warehouse manager – the one who packs all the orders and keeps track of our inventory. Eric joined us around 2008; he predominantly handles layouts, art files, and stuff like that.

The 2009 starting page promotes DEIPHAGO’s upcoming “Filipino Antichrist”, Hells Headbangers’ thirty-ninth CD title, described as ‘hi-speed satanic bestial metal’.

CHASE: Voltaire (DEIPHAGO) sent us a CD-R of something he’d been working on. It makes sense that he’d hit me up because one of our earlier releases was the ABIGAIL split with KORIHOR from Davao City, Philippines – which, to be honest, is pretty much the biggest rip-off city in existence. But those dudes are legit. There weren’t many bands over there back then, so I assume Voltaire got our contact details through KORIHOR.

I hadn’t heard “Filipino Antichrist” before, so this was a particularly vicious find. The members look heavy as fuck, too.

CHASE: It’s definitely an odd one. Just a tangent side story: the mail lady who used to drop off our post made an odd request, ‘Can you turn the stereo down for me? I can’t stand this loud, scary music.’ Our response was to crank up DEIPHAGO whenever she came around. It’s the most absurd thing, right? Total cunt move. Who requests that?

 

The following year brought another milestone as Hells Headbangers acquired a warehouse.

CHASE: By then, we’d filled up the entire house – to the point where my wife at the time was fucking pissed, as were Eric and Justin’s girlfriends. We stored records in the basement, upstairs, and the garage, which made it very impractical to move inventory around. So, the three of us decided to get something a little easier to operate out of.

Chase and Justin moved to houses of their own, whereas Eric stayed in the Medina place. Hells Headbangers established a new headquarters in Valley City, Ohio.

CHASE: The warehouse definitely propelled the label forward. For instance, we could have friends working for us without them disrupting our personal lives by coming to the house. We were able to bring in outside help to a professional location and operate more like a real business. One step at a time, I guess.

The same year, Hells Headbangers licensed INQUISITION’s 1998 debut album, “Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancient Cult”. The band’s creative force, Dagon, was born in the US but moved to Colombia with his mother at a young age.

CHASE: I approached the dude from Sylphorium Records in Colombia – Nelson – about reissuing “Into the Infernal Regions…”, and he gave his blessing. I wasn’t actually in touch with Jason (Dagon) at the time, so Nelson orchestrated it. Eventually, Jason and I started talking directly, and then he and Kramer had all these ideas about reissuing their stuff.

Antichrist Kramer assumed control of INQUISITION’s art direction around the time of their 2004 album “Magnificent Glorification of Lucifer”. He also designed the 2007 “Nefarious Dismal Orations” and “Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm” in 2010.

The “Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancient Cult” reissue became Hells Headbangers’ forty-ninth CD and forty-third LP. They also released a deluxe vinyl version marketed as a ‘Tome Edition’.

CHASE: That ‘tome’ was totally Kramer’s idea; he designed all their artwork and layouts at the time. Kramer used to be very controlling and hands-on in terms of INQUISITION’s presentation, which I thought worked well for them. That’s how I got to know him, even though we were acquaintances simply due to proximity – he’s in Illinois, and I’m in Ohio. Kramer had his own labels, too.

Over the years, Antichrist Kramer has operated three different labels dealing with metal, industrial, noise, and power electronics – Satanic Skinhead Propaganda, Deathangle Absolution Records, and Audial Decimation Records.

 

In early 2011, the INQUISITION connection deepened as Hells Headbangers licensed “Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm” from German No Colours Records for a North American CD and LP release.

CHASE: Jason was really pleased with our handling of both the debut reissue and “Ominous Doctrines…”. Even Kramer seemed impressed. We had a verbal agreement for Hells Headbangers to do the album after, as well as additional re-releases of INQUISITION’s previous records.

However, INQUISITION signed with Season of Mist for their next album, “Obscure Verses for the Multiverse”.

CHASE: Things were really blowing up for them, and so – in typical fashion – the band got a manager involved, which is when things usually get annoying. They come strutting in and immediately go, ‘Right, we gotta start doing this and that!’ And by the point musicians hire a manager, they’re already checked out mentally. ‘All right, whatever you think is best.’