After his stint in death metal icons Incantation and the demise of influential black metal trailblazers Profanatica, Paul Ledney formed his infamous solo project Havohej in the early 90's, and to this day the Havohej catalog remains one of the most vile and anti-Christian black metal projects to ever come out of the U.S. underground (and if you haven't noticed it yet, Havohej spells out "Jehovah" in reverse). The later Havohej records are especially noteworthy for their bizarre black ambient metal sound that arguably out-Abruptums Abruptum, an abstract mix of primitive black metal structures, chaotic noise and ambient deathscapes that explored the filthiest corners of avant-garde BM before anyone was even talking about stuff like that; but well before such cult classics of ultra-satanic ambience like the Black Perversion EP and The Black Mist, there was Havohej's debut album Dethrone The Son Of God, thirteen songs of crude, hateful black metal scum released through Candlelight Records in 1993. That original Candlelight release has been out of print for years, but Dethrone was recently reissued by Hells Headbangers in a revamped CD and LP package with slightly altered cover artwork. Most of the songs on the album were actually Profanatica tracks that had never been released before, reworked into a more stripped-down, dissonant sound; by current standards, this early Havohej recording is practically doomy, with many of the songs plodding along at a sludgy mid-tempo and blasting into rickety thrash sections and sloppy blastbeats every once in awhile, and this stuff is nowhere near as experimental and out-there as later Havohej releases. Even so, this is still a supremely fucked up slab of low-fi outsider BM, marked by Paul Ledney's over-the-top gurgling shriek and his weird reverb-heavy vocal mix, the hilarious onslaught of blasphemy (how can you not dig an album with songs like "Fucking Of Sacred Assholes" and "Raping Of Angels" ?), the heavy death metal influence in many of the slower, choppier riffs, erratic drumming that sometimes slips into these bizarre stop-start rhythms and herky-jerky tom patterns, and it's all served up in short, violent bursts of noisy, atavistic black metal sludge, dissonant and warped, almost like a much more primitive, basement black metal version of Incantation with seriously twisted song arrangements, finally ending with the a cappella title track where Ledney growls a litany of anti-christian hatred for several minutes, which you can actually follow along with by reading the inside of the gatefold sleeve.

While Dethrone The Son Of God is nowhere as noisy, fans of this new wave of barbaric punky black metal like Malveillance and Akitsa might get into the brain-damaged doom-filth of early Havohej, and there's no denying that this stuff has been a big influence on the evolution of American black metal. This vinyl edition gives the album a deluxe presentation with a full color heavyweight gatefold jacket, printed inner sleeve, and thick black vinyl, limited edition of course.