What even is psychedelic, anymore? Increasingly in the metal community, it’s short-hand for “weird shit to offset generic metal riffs” rather than anything truly exploratory, or takes you to another level of existence and works to create a mood, an altered experience over the course of an album’s length. PR’s gotta PR though, and after listening to so many bands and albums tagged with that particular word, it’s become wearying. But three minutes into the opening track of Muuntautuja, the sixth full-length from Finnish legends Oranssi Pazuzu, I felt transported, shifted to a plane of being at once disturbing and evocative, a sonic realm few bands can travel to.
Yeah…psychedelic fits here.
The above shouldn’t be a surprise; Oranssi Pazuzu have been tripping on this road for a while now, arguably since 2013’s Valonielu, though the real psychedelic trappings wouldn’t fully reveal themselves until 2016’s monstrous Värähtelijä. From there it’s been a slow expansion, with the band incorporating more and more ideas and sonic layers to build out a sound that is unique to them. Specifically on Muuntautuja, there’s an increased focus on electronics and noise elements, adding in small nuances you register on an almost subliminal level. Low frequency pulses thrum and throb at the threshold of your hearing, only to slowly rise in dynamics until it swallows the earth. The foundations of black metal are further buried in the muck and detritus of Oranssi Pazuzu’s growth, which I find to be more and more of a blessing with each listen.
It helps that Muuntautuja (translated from the Finnish as “shapeshifter”) is, despite its undulating riffage, a fairly compact album. It clocks in at under 45 minutes, with most tracks hovering around the five- to six-minute mark. Opener “Biolkemisti” gets a dirty industrial tone in its rumbling bass before the vocals kick in and take the track into a blistering noise rock cadence. The title track takes a very different approach, with its quiet, menacing electronic pulse signaling the arrival of a more sinister rhythm. The heavily processed vocals only add to the unease and put the listener in a spectral frame of mind, keeping you off balance until the heavy bass bomb kicks in. It’s Deadmau5 buried in the viscous wake of some Lovecraftian Elder God, and it’s a heavy trip, to use the parlance of the genre.
Even when Muuntautuja treads more familiar waters, there are left turns, such as the rolling wide turns the riffs take on “Voitelu” or the pretty, tentative opening piano on “Ikikäärme.” To my ears, the latter gets closest to that coveted “psychedelic” tag, with that piano slowly becoming enveloped by more ominous sounds over its nine-minute run time. It sounds like my brain opening up and devouring the universe ever so slowly.
If that’s not enough to convince you Oranssi Pazuzu have once again delivered the goods, then all I can add is that this is the best album they’ve put out since Värähtelijä…and that’s saying something indeed.
-Chris
Muuntautuja is available October 11 from Nuclear Blast Records. For more information on Oranssi Pazuzu, check out their website, Facebook and Instagram pages.
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