I fell in love with this band
when I heard their last release in 2013, titled “Valonielu”. It was a stunning
combination of black metal and psychedelia, an album full of songs that took
you everywhere except where you expected to go. If their last album was
stunning, then this one has me fumbling for the right words to describe it.
Quite simply, this is a mind
fuck of an album, in all the best ways possible. The black metal influence is
still there, and the music is full of psychedeliciousness. I don't know any
other way to say it. This is a band that has opened the portals to other
dimensions of music. To take these elements, and to be so progressive with how
the music flows and grows and seems to take on a life of its own, is an amazing
thing to hear. Most of us have seen a lava lamp, how it just moves and
coalesces and breaks apart and becomes something that you would have never
guessed 20 seconds earlier; that is how the music of Oranssi Pazuzu
works. All the while seeming perfectly organic. You'd never suspect the human
hands and minds at work crafting these tunes and deciding how they should go.
I put this album on and it just
took me away. I stopped what I was doing and just fell into the flow. At 70
plus minutes, its a fairly lengthy journey, yet it seems to go by in a blink of
an eye. This is that rare album, especially these days, where every song can
stand on its own, yet they all work together. This album is meant to be heard
as one piece, all at one time. It is meant for you to pay attention to it, not
to have it on in the background while you are doing something else. I tell you
from personal experience, it will not allow you to do that. You won't be able
to listen to this with just part of your attention. It demands that you give it
your all, and it rewards you. The music is so rich with dynamics and
instrumentation, shifting rhythms and time signatures and tempos. Your
attention is rewarded as you discover the intricacies inside each track. This
is the kind of music that you put on at the end of a long day full of things
you'd rather forget. It takes you away and by the time the trip is over, all of
those things that you wanted to put behind you are way off in the distance. It
is music that refreshes you and resets you and energizes you.
This is a true gem of an album,
and even if these particular genres don't interest you, even if they are styles
of music you don't usually pay attention to, this is the exception. Give it a
shot, let the music work through you and around you and listen to what music
can really be in the hands of the truly skillful. Oranssi Pazuzu are the
real deal and you need it in your life.
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