Oranssi Pazuzu
Muuntautuja
NUCLEAR BLAST
“Muuntautuja,” a word native to Oranssi Pazuzu’s Finnish homeland that translates to “transformation,” feels like yet another apt title for the band’s music both in its definition and in its tongue-twister quality for English-speaking listeners—a forewarning that the record you’re about to listen to is challenging from start to finish. Those familiar with the experimental metal quintet know this is their modus operandi—idiosyncratically intelligent, defiantly anomalous, and above all ambitious, the crew showed off those chops on their first five full-lengths dating back to 2009. It never takes long for the band to kick into high gear, flaunting their adeptness at arty psych-rock and their extraordinary ability to detonate avant-garde explosives at a moment’s notice. They closely resemble hypnotists, thanks to their irrepressible skill at mesmerizing listeners, particularly on their courageously long compositions.
And yet, with all the dedication they apply into knitting together those often-divergent musical strains, Oranssi Pazuzu manage to heap even more styles onto Muuntautuja, a mountain of a record (despite being their shortest to date) that proves their penchant for monumental ambition—and that they are, once again, somehow able to rise to the challenge. Two chief examples of the broader strokes that Oranssi Pazuzu paint onto this particular project are forays into ambient music (the title track and “Hautatuuli”) and black metal (“Voitelu” and Valotus”), both of which they wholeheartedly and gleefully embrace even if some witnesses to their preternatural prowess reel with abject horror at certain junctures on the record, none more frightening than when they play Russian roulette with their influences.
If you’ve never witnessed the sheer bombastic brilliance of this band—either while falling into a trance-like state of grace at one of their rare Stateside concerts or through spinning their black circles at your own place of residence—you owe it to yourself to experience them in whatever capacity you can. As long as you have a functioning heart, an open mind, and a loving soul, your fixation with and deep affinity for these divinely gifted musicians likely won’t waver—certainly not as a result of this, their most psychedelically complex opus.
