Oranssi Pazuzu: Colour In The Blackness

ORANSSI PAZUZU (or: The Demon Of The Wind With the Colour of Cosmic Energy) belong to that rare category of bands that discovers uncharted territory on every record. With an exploratory spirit calls to mind the MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA and KING CRIMSON, they have injected a blackened, planetary energy into the motorik machinations of old Krautrock stalwarts like CAN and NEU!, to find themselves spinning ever outwards into some other unknowable sonic dimension. As such, their music is amorphous and hard to pin down. With genre-bending proficiency, these wild Finns produce some of the iciest sounding black metal cuts out there at the same time as summoning the acid-soaked, psychedelic spirit of trad 70s prog bands. ORANSSI PAZUZU’s unlikely recipe provides the finest example of how ‘metal-ness’ is latent in non-metal and how anti-traditionalism is integral to true musical originality.

With transcendental goals at heart, ORANSSI PAZUZU’s songs are sound experiments that weave together disparate niches of the sonic gamut. “Musically ORANSSI PAZUZU is a fusion band, we fuse together whatever feels right,” Jun-his explains to us. With electronic influences, industrialised percussion, and blow-your-brains-out basslines that rage beneath a furnace of satanic vocals, it is clear ORANSSI PAZUZU never fail to deliver a wild and exhilarating ride of cosmic proportions.

Following in the footsteps of pioneering underground Finnish band CIRCLE, ORANSSI PAZUZU’s earliest records mastered the art of macabre and dystopian space-rock, although theirs was never a quest for a defined sound. “We see ourselves as ‘explorers’” Jun-his claims, and this exploratory spirit has been gathering strength ever since the band’s inception in 2007. After releasing two genre-warping albums, Muukalainen Puhuu in 2009 and Kosmonument in 2010, their touring schedules and festival appearances started to ratchet up. With notable bookings at Roadburn and Hellfest in 2012, they delivered another gnarly release Valonielu in 2013, which prepared the ground for their first European headline tour later that year.

However, it wasn’t until their critically acclaimed Värähtelijä in 2016, that brought them fervent mainstream recognition, as well as a place on James Hetfield’s personal Spotify playlist, and a glowing review in Pitchfork. ORANSSI PAZUZU’s trajectory has continued to soar ever since, with legions of fans flocking to their electric live shows. Fast forward to 2020, and ORANSSI PAZUZU have won over a range of intrepid labels like Pittsburgh’s 20 Buck Spin, and Finnish doom curators Svart Records. Their sixth album Mestarin kynsi, ready to drop out of the Nuclear Blast mushroom cloud, sees them voyaging ever deeper into the depths of electronic, metallic and psychedelic sounds, where they discover fascinating realms with every new incantation.

The cosmic necromancy that ORANSSI PAZUZU has brought to life on Mestarin kynsi is delivered with an experimental and earnest tone. Jun-his told us “on Mestarin kynsi, we tried to put together some ideas that would work in mysterious ways,” and this album is an expression of mystery – a liminal space where ORANSSI PAZUZU force the listener to imagine our own troubled reality colliding with other possible worlds. Using improvised psych rock, electronica and black metal as their primary tools, these maniacs make possible many things you’ve probably never heard from a ‘black metal’ band before.

As Jun-his explains, “the sinister elements and the rawness of the music does come from black metal, but there is so much more going on.” It is this ‘so much more’ that makes Mestarin kynsi such an interesting album. It sometimes feels as though its constituent parts are wrenching in opposing directions. Take, for example, the laser hot synth lines that rip through the heart of the album’s crushing swansong. Taivaan portti (Today’s Gate) or the extended pan-flute motif that loops hypnotically throughout the album’s title track, Uusi teknokratia (The New Technocracy). Jun-his explained the how they settled on these outlandish aspects of the album. “Our keyboard player, Evil, had this really cool idea of these chords going with flute sounds, which reminded me a bit of the first Alien movie. Then we took it further with the idea that female vocals would sing the chords. So you never really know [what you’re hearing] – sometimes its the flute sometimes the vocals.”

Just as COVID-19 lays the groundwork for relentless surveillance and totalitarian control of populations in the real world, so does the psychic storm of Mestarin kynsi depicting a hellish place corrupted by propaganda and indoctrination, where a dispassionate ruler bends the desperate populace to his will. “We started out by jamming songs as if they were spells, or curses,” says Jun-His about the band’s approach to writing the new album. “Then it kind of elaborated into a story about a character who establishes a totalitarian religious cult and controls it with dark magic, mind control and propaganda.”

It is the proximity of this hell to our own world that makes the album so compelling in these troubled times, and it is the sheer prowess of ORANSSI PAZUZU’s song-writing that brings this uncanny world so vividly to life.

Distorted Sound had the pleasure of discussing the strange world of ORANSSI PAZUZU with vocalist and guitarist, Jun-His. We touched on everything from Conan the Barbarian to COVID-19, as the pandemic apocalypse descended around us.

Hi Jun-his. Could you tell us a little about where your band name comes from?

Jun-His: Sure. Pazuzu is a mythological deity – the God of locusts. It is an idea that has old roots, but is also present in pop-culture, for example in The Exorcist. And Oranssi means orange in Finnish. Whilst classic black metal bands like DARKTHRONE could be visualised as black and white movies, for us there has to be colour. Orange seemed right because it is a psychedelic colour and is thought to be one of the first colours in existence after the big bang. It’s a bit of a silly name, but kind of works at the same time!

And what are the musical origins of ORANSSI PAZUZU?

Jun-His: The roots of our playing comes from 70s prog and jam bands. We really want to get the band groove right, which isn’t that common in metal. This was the mindset of 70s bands; through jamming, you can more easily stumble into uncharted territory, almost by accident.

…and how about the concepts going on in the new album, Mestarin Kynsi?

Jun-His: On every album we have some theme going on. It makes it easier for us to have a focus point to in order to start jamming our abstract ideas into music. It’s kind of like an imagination game, if you like. And after a few songs this character arrived, almost like Thulsa Doom from Conan the Barbarian, who establishes a totalitarian religious cult and controls it with dark magic, mind control and propaganda. But the lyrics are like nightmarish visions from a dream. Ultimately, for me the album is about humans wanting to believe in something so badly that they are willing to go to extreme measures trying to find it.

Does the scene around you today also play a big part in your sound?

Jun-His: Well, when you’re inside something, it’s quite hard to establish what the scene actually is! Of course, we’re friends with a couple of bands, DARK BUDDHA RISING and PH, in Finland, but in general the most I am influenced is when I get to know people who make the music. Whether touring bands or simply artists working at home, you need to know what art means to the person making the music… Rather than just listening to some band from some country, I think it’s really an important learning experience to actually talk with people about their art.

In a world of light-speed consumption over-saturated media, maintaining a philosophy like this is admirable, if not down-right difficult. Before making a getaway back to the cold Lapland night, Jun-his spared us a few parting thoughts about the uncertain times we live in.

Jun-His: These days, I’m thinking about just staying in and writing quite a bit of music. I think this could be a warning or a wake up call to think more globally… you can’t just think about your own environment anymore. We have to start paying attention to how we can work as a global community. That might be the silver lining to this…

Mestarin kynsi is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.

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