ORANSSI PAZUZU: Mestarin Kynsi (BLACK METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Oranssi Pazuzu hadn't offered anything for four years and a rather monumental "Värähtelijä", a long time lapse however strewn with the EPs "Farmakologinen" and "Kevät / Värimyrsky" without forgetting the "Syntheosis" of Waste Of Space Orchestra, fruit of his alliance with the equally demented Dark Buddha Rising. That's to say the expectation raised by this fifth album, which sees its progenitors increasingly cast off black metal to land on the shores not really more engaging. Because, more than ever, the definition of psychedelism that these Finns offer us does not rhyme with mellow atmospheres but with dark power. For them, progressive rock merges with Robert Fripp's collective or with an oppressively cold krautock. Torrential drums, abrasive guitars or flayed vocals still tie their canvas to black metal but electronic sounds and haunted water are rising more and more above these thousand lakes whose water boils with dark scents.

An insane cacophony lurks throughout this album which ends by plunging into a dementia as chaotic as it is unleashed, embodied by a cataclysmic 'Taivan Portii', where screaming, implacable rhythm and cosmic sounds combine in a pandemonium. Each composition is eaten away by a proliferating madness in the manner of uncontrolled metastasis, as witnessed by this 'Tyhjyyden Sakramenti' whose hypnotic climate gradually gives way to darkness, pushed by these rusty-tasting, ramshackle guitars in a hallucinated ascent.

And what about 'Uusi Teknokratia' which, nimbled by a myriad of electronic sounds that border on trance, appears like the sick child born from the feverish copulation between Crimson King and Darkspace, between azimuthal progressive rock and icy, stellar black metal. And the more you listen, the more you lose yourself in this maze that looks like a trip as crazy as it is disturbing. These six pieces form the successive steps of a staircase that gradually plunges into the bowels of an underground city stuck between several dimensions, a phantasmagorical universe from which one cannot escape unscathed.

Faithful to himself, Oranssi Pazuzu delivers with "Mestarin Kynsi" an album to his (de)measure, devouring the sound space to dress with an ebony strength a black metal more and more progressive in its cosmic madness. - Official website

ORANSSI PAZUZU

MESTARIN KYNSI

NUCLEAR BLAST

BLACK METAL