ALBUM REVIEW: Mestarin kynsi – Oranssi Pazuzu

Imagine, for a second, the earliest breath of the universe; the cosmic wires of creation short-circuiting for the first-time. This unfathomable moment is the energy source that powers Finnish sound machine ORANSSI PAZUZU, who are set to release their latest offering of blackened psychedelic jams, Mestarin kynsi, via Nuclear Blast Records on April 20th.

For ORANSSI PAZUZU, genre boundaries present irksome limitations, and their desire to challenge weary old musical perimeters has never been more apparent than on Mestarin kynsi (Master’s Claw). By repudiating go-to ‘metal’ tropes almost entirely, this album evokes a peculiar world in which gravity pulls upwards, and beauty melts from shards of aural misery. With a canny sense of rhythm and a pop sensibility, ORANSSI PAZUZU conjure colourful spumes of psychedelic cloud from the depths of hell itself.

The exploratory spirit of their art is grounded in purist dexterity, and a healthy back catalogue of genre-warping releases. In parts hypnotic jazz, in others blackened-electro, Mestarin kynsi redefines extreme music in the most exigent and abrasive way. Their sound has been likened to that of SWANS and NEUROSIS, though their song-craft is firmly rooted in the supernatural experimentations of composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

With an unusual flare for finding the common seams of entirely disparate genres, ORANSSI PAZUZU’s ingenuity lies in these repetitive acts of creative distortion. Nowhere is their defiance of order more apparent or more edifying than on the album’s title track Uusi teknokratia (A New Technocracy). Clocking in at just over ten minutes, the song is a kaleidoscopic nightmare of pan-flutes looping over hellish vocal curses that rip open portals of caustic, repetitive guitar lines and orchestral swells of ghostly chanting. Words simply fail in the light of its gothic majesty.

Taking an electronic turn, Kuulen ääniä maan opens with a pall of claustrophobic droning that bleeds into beats of militaristic urgency, just as appropriate in an early NINE INCH NAILS or THE PRODIGY release. Again, it is the use of blackened aesthetics that gives this track an undeniable idiosyncrasy. Floating in the delirium are four brief verses of a wretched prayer to god only knows what, followed by a funereal come-down of KRAFTWERK-esque proportions.

ORANSSI PAZUZU draw greedily from pools of sound that have nourished progressive trailblazers, old and new, like RADIOHEAD and BLACK MIDI for example. They’re unafraid to dedicate seven entire minutes to an album’s coda, which, in this case, is simply a single guitar note bent murderously against an explosion of cymbals, snares and trebly, star-spangled chords of demonic perfection.

It is the act of being sucked, gut-first, through an acid-spattered portal into your pre-existence, where a silence deeper than anything you could ever conceive of buries you in nothingness. Just listen to it.

Rating: 10/10

Mestarin kynsi is set for release on April 17th via Nuclear Blast Records.

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