The New Oranssi Pazuzu Album Is Better Than Sex On Drugs In A Plane Traveling At Warp Speed Through An Uncharted Galaxy. On A Waterbed.
Seriously, man, it’s that good.
With their new album, Värähtelijä, the Finnish atmospheric black metallers have not released an album so much as opened a wide portal into a transfixing psychedelic wormhole to a dimension entirely liberated from earthly notions of time, space and gravity. As with past releases, Oranssi Pazuzu have conjured a wildly original, sensory-enhancing alternate reality unlike any other post-metal incantations gliding through the cosmic ether. This is one of those albums where you keep stopping and staring at your iPod in disbelief that what you’re hearing really is that insanely good. Captivating melodies flutter and dissipate above chaotic black metal tempos and shape-shifting time signatures that dramatically rotate one’s orientation from passage-to-passage. Whereas loads of metalheads find the traditional, lo-fidelity clatter of black metal as several steps beyond accessible, Värähtelijä offers a thrilling compromise with as many closed-fist, chest-beating hooks as trippy forays into lattices of dense rhythmic complexity. Like any psych metal outing worth its weight in acid, Värähtelijä generates cavernous spaces within the tracks by firing spiraling, prismatic leads high above chugging sets of repetitive tempos that invest songs like Hypnotisoitu Viharukous with an exhilarating sense of flight, and while shimmery walls of shoegaze line much of the material, this is no thinly-veiled dreampop album masquerading as black metal. This is a whole new trip, baby. Check it out.
More about Oranssi Pazuzu:
In 2013, Finlands ORANSSI PAZUZU issued their Valonielu LP, an album of timeless creative immensity that was met with ubiquitous praise throughout the world, and solidified the bands position as one of the most forward-thinking and interesting metal bands. Now, in the early months of 2016, ORANSSI PAZUZU returns with the follow-up album and fourth overall, the mind-bending masterwork Värähtelijä.
Since birth, ORANSSI PAZUZU has never been satisfied to stick with a formula. Each album has seen the band expand upon its previous incarnation and then, like a supernova, blow it up and transform again into something recognizable but completely new. Värähtelijä continues in this vein, giving the band much more room to diverge and explore the vast regions of hypnotic progressive psychedelia and the nebulous outer limits of Scandinavian black metal. Songs explode with radiant ultraviolet color and plunge into the deep black darkness of innermost consciousness. If Valonielu was the creation of a universe, Värähtelijä is the magnification and expansion of its infinite boundaries.
A more than seventy-minute sprawling voyage, Värähtelijä more accurately represents the stunning live presence of the band where the songs often span new and previously unheard dimensions of form and structure. Not meant for genre purists, ORANSSI PAZUZU is on a trip all their own; modern electric pioneers on an expedition to unlock the keys to the hidden spaces all around and inside us.
Issues the band of their newest opus, Värähtelijä is continuing where we left off with Valonielu, but it plunges deeper into the pitch black hypnosis, combines progressive song structures to more free and flowing parts. At the same time, its the heaviest and the most atmospheric album we`ve done so far. The fusion between different ends of spectrum reveals new realities we`ve never discovered before. We really wanted this album to go to new places and to be the crossover album of genres we always wanted to do. To further boost the idea, the album was done with Julius Mauranen who had previously done lots of Finnish shoegaze and indie pop albums. I think its safe to say that this is by far the heaviest stuff he has done and for us, working with a guy like him stretched our sound to much more dynamic and trippy horizons. Lyrics-wise, the songs revolve around tripping in a psyche-space, with each song representing a vision or mirage that will be revealed to the listener. They are individual, but contain common elements with themes of unknown, sacrifice, transcendence, hate, hierarchy of power and, in the end, becoming a part of the cosmos through death.
The fourth explorative chapter in the lineage of ORANSSI PAZUZU, Värähtelijä will see worldwide release on February 26th, 2016, with 20 Buck Spin handling the album for North America and Svart handling international territories on CD, 2xLP and digital platforms. Seekers of hypnotic and mind-expanding alloys citing Ved Buens Ende, Magma, Hawkwind, Circle, Thorns, Killing Joke, Abigor, Neurosis, Aluk Todolo, Grave Pleasures and the like pay heed.