The mad demon Oranssi Pazuzu is back.
Rather discreet since their previous release, the band made up of Jun-His (vocals/guitar, Three Pounds Trigger, ex-Kuolleet Intiaanit), Ontto (bass/vocals, Atomikylä), Korjak (drums), EviL (keyboards/effects/vocals) and Ikon (guitar, Domovoyd), all also members of Waste of Space Orchestra, unveil Muuntautuja 2024, their sixth album.
The album opens with Bioalkemisti‘s eerie percussion, followed by bass, drums and keyboards, then vocals that accentuate the oppression created as the guitar joins the mix. The sound is as chaotic and psychedelic as unpredictable, creating a kind of dark cloud from which impressive choruses, screaming leads and futuristic keyboards can emerge perfectly before Muuntautuja takes its place, developing its own unsettling mixture. If the first moments are relatively calm, the sound will grow considerably heavier to create a hypnotic mass that stops abruptly to allow Voitelu‘s bewitching atmosphere to take its place, sometimes approaching Avant-Garde Metal more than Black Metal. The vocal parts remain aggressive, but the instrumental seeks to hold our attention by all means, feeding on permanent noisy sounds, but the band allows us a moment’s respite with Hautatuuli, where the musicians remain fairly calm. Even the vocalist begins to murmur, but the band bursts into flames about halfway through the track, unveiling a majestic protean creation that calms down again to resume its original tonalities, leading us on to Valotus, a far more energetic composition that knows how to take advantage of singular harmonics as much as a velocity blast. The band keeps its jerky approach until it encounters another pause, then a veritable apocalypse of sound until Ikikäärme offers its complex touch that becomes increasingly hazy with time. Vocal appearances confirm the strangeness of the riffs, but the whole thing finally catches fire with an abrasive, haunting saturation, with even a hint of melancholy that lingers as the long composition drops in intensity and fades into nothingness, joining the cold Vierivä usva with which the musicians lull and fascinate us one last time before hanging up their instruments.
Although I’m relatively used to these strange musical experiments, I can’t help feeling that Oranssi Pazuzu‘s musicians are inhabited. You shouldn’t expect anything from Muuntautuja, just to be fully surprised by its madness.
80/100