Four albums into their career, the Finnish quintet Oranssi Pazuzu may have at last sidestepped the confines of the tag "black metal." During the last decade, the adventurous band has explored the astral infinity of extreme psychedelia and the grim oblivion of extreme metal. As the name Oranssi Pazuzu (essentially "orange demon") suggests, the band’s sound was often an even split, with the two pieces of their musical personality meant to fit like complementary puzzle pieces. Even so, they were often referred to as a metal band, albeit one with some extracurricular interests, Värähtelijä, a 69-minute escapist escapade, should finally, fundamentally correct that misperception.
Heavy metal hasn’t disappeared from their sound. "Havuluu," for instance, folds great, big, back-of-the-throat yells into its fuzz and, about halfway in, pivots on a blast beat and a ghastly scream that suggest Darkthrone. "Lahja" is powered by a Deep Purple proto-metal riff, and "Hypnotisoitu Viharukous" somehow fits stoner and thrash nods into the same five-minute span. More than ever, though, those roots lurk beneath the surface, acting as the foundation for a much more open-ended approach. Tilt your ears slightly, and the title track’s gray glow seems less like funeral doom with an accelerated pulse and more like narcotized Krautrock; imagine Harmonia succumbing to seasonal affective disorder. "Lahja" suggests a snippet of a grueling Swans marathon, with barked imprecations and martial drums pitted against sparkling vibraphone and guitars so free and bright they recall Sonny Sharrock. With Värähtelijä, Oranssi Pazuzu’s music has become a refraction of sorts, so that what you hear depends on your perspective—how you listen, what you bring to it, what you expect from it.
On 2013’s very good Valonielu, Oranssi Pazuzu seemed to strive to orchestrate its opposing impulses, to make them work together through relatively concise songs with discrete structures. You could almost imagine those tunes coming through the speakers of some large outdoor festival, like the aggressive Finnish answer to Sweden’s Dungen. Here, though, Oranssi Pazuzu show no such concern for restraint or expectation. The 17-minute "Vasemman Käden Hierarkia" feels like an album unto itself, brilliantly twisting between noise-rock outbursts and electric Miles allusions, distorted doom passages and sinister soundtrack references.
Typically, when bands dig themselves out of black metal pigeonholes (or, really, metal pigeonholes at large) and fold their ideas inside other, more accessible styles, worlds of possibility and popularity can open up. See, for instance, Tribulation’s own turn out of death metal basics during the last two years or Deafheaven’s climb toward the light across its own half-decade. Oranssi Pazuza’s step out of metal, though, finds them burrowing deeper into a world of their own creation. Värähtelijä is a weird, grotesque record, where genres are superimposed on one another and where eccentric choices are the rule and not the exception. Yes, Oranssi Pazuzu is out of the old black metal box and lost—wonderfully, strangely—somewhere between heaven and hell.
