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

With unpronounceable album titles, covers as strange as they are uninviting and, above all, music that's just as bizarre, labeled as black metal but closer to a deranged avant-garde, it's an understatement to say that Oranssi Pazuzu's universe is difficult to access.

And while “Mestatin Kynsi” (2020) had already pushed back quite a few limits, a sonic bellyful of black psychedelia, “Muuntautuja” sinks even deeper into the bowels of the unspeakable, a labyrinth polluted by rust-ridden guitars, gangrened by a myriad of electronic cysts. The drums never go straight, like the most hallucinated King Crimson, and the ambiences are suffocating, unhealthy, spewing from an infernal boiler.

This sixth album isn't very long, barely forty minutes, but it seems to last twice as long, a cacophonous torment to which neither light nor melody manage to cling, as in the case of 'Valotus', a noisy procession beating with a strident pulse. Under these conditions, it's tempting to give up after just one listen. Yet, as always with the Finns, you mustn't hesitate to insist, to multiply the comings and goings, however uncomfortable, in the telluric intimacy of an album whose obsessive power gradually ends up inoculating its venom.

'Ikikäärme', with its mournful piano and clear vocals reminiscent of Garm (Ulver), shines with a hypnotic, if still sickly, brilliance. Shrouded in an eerie haze, 'Hautatuuli' is adorned with crimson shreds that make it quite fascinating in its subterranean beauty. Equally bizarre, 'Vierivä usav' is a cosmic-sounding instrumental that closes the vault on a melancholy, despairing note.

Even the most mortifying and bizarre projections are streaked with timid glimmers of light, details buried in their meanders, which lift them out of the darkness and offer the intrepid listener fragile beacons, fleeting landmarks that are soon swallowed up by the darkness that always reclaims its rightful place. A case in point are the ghostly choruses that drape 'Biolkemisti' like a shroud, an opening track that is nonetheless aggressive in its demented fury. Although contaminated throughout by the corrosion of electronic tumors with stellar accents, the last part of the eponymous track distills a bewitching leprosy bordering on a form of pulsating trance, while 'Voitelu' is haunted by mysterious atmospheres.

“Muuntautuja” reminds us that the black metal forged by Oranssi Pazuzu is definitely unlike any other except itself, a frightening laboratory nestled in the underworld, brutal in its convulsive darkness and fascinating in its evolving force. - Official website

ORANSSI PAZUZU

MUUNTAUTUJA

NUCLEAR BLAST

BLACK METAL