Oranssi Pazuzu : "Muuntautuja"

The best explanation for what happens on this album is Finland is growing killer shrooms. Their weed must not be that shabby either. The opening track is closer to black metal than not, just with more of a noise rock bass line driving it. The singer is the only one who is still angry, so he must be the designated driver here. The second song finds the drugs really beginning to take a turn. The drummer is the most lucid member at this point. The shrooms are starting to kick in on their vocalist who has relented to this mind expansion, It chills him out into more of an alien chant. Normally I complain when bands go for more of a sound than writing a song, as this tends to drone, but the layers introduced along the way work well enough. They do bring the heavy midway into the song. 

Once again things are flowing rather than following a well-charted arrangement. Most of their songs are written from jamming. This album is the best of those takes with overdubs dropped in. 

"Voitelu" finds things ebbing down to being almost more of a metal band again. Tempo wise I would call this progressive sludge. The vocals are fighting between tripping their balls off and going back into their more aggressive persona. The bass player who was once holding this together is now too far gone. A piano line was written in a moment of clarity to make this feel like a song, Chaos is really reigning here. Experimentation is swallowing composition. What is band practice like for these guys? 

They smoke some weed and mellow things out as it drifts away from metal into something Radiohead might do in one of their more depressive grooves. The whispered vocals tell me they were not really thinking about writing vocals for this one, but then remembered the song needed something. Going into "Valotus" they are trying to remember they are humans holding instruments, this makes them angry so they lash out by playing metal again. The term psychedelic black metal has been tossed around in the past, I think this song is the definition. While they are going above and beyond in the making of this album I would not recommend doing anything stronger than a couple of bong hits to it. Some of the chaos can be jarring. 

The album wanders off into some kind of ritual they uncovered, The vocals chant in the incantation of an unearthly pulse with hints of guitar haunting it. Things space out in more abstract sounds that are hard to call songs for the last two tracks I will round this down to an 8, really cool drug music not their best songwriting., This is not out of range of the bulk of the albums I have reviewed by these guys though as it stands  2013'a "Velonielu" is their best album. 

pst527

BACCHUS : "II"

 

In my mind black metal exists outside of the sex , drugs and rock n roll paradigm. I have talked to black metal musicians about doing mushrooms, but even then it never seems like a party genre. I know Abbath went to rehab, and drinking is common place, it doesn't seems like where four guys are getting together and smoking some weed to write tunes like most metal. So far a band to lead with the fact their music is inspired by being in an altered state, it shifts my expectations. I am not expecting Pink Floyd here, but certainly listening to where this changed what they do. They are also a French band so bound to be more artsy anyways. 

The opening track is chanted and drones more like an intro than a song. The first actual song is pretty solid in it's shimmer. Not way out in left field from what black metal normally is. It's melodic in it's own way and not overly reliant on the conventions of the genre to enforce it's throb. The third song ,and they are titled as such, is weirder and I can hear where drugs might have changed the way thing are being done with keyboards given more of a spotlight in place. The first blast beats I paid attention to crop up here. I say it like that as they could have slipped some past me earlier and I might not have noticed. Urfaust is one band I can draw comparisons to. The vocals are in a similar sung chant in place, though these guys are not too high to growl. 

As the album progresses it is clear they like to do things in a deliberate manner and prefer the chanted vocals over just screaming. The arrangements are not elaborate, they ride they mood out. They also have captured a dark enough feel to things to make this work. The fourth song kind of drones on, it also earns comparisons to Urfaust. It is a pleasing sound , but in terms of songwriting, not as expansive. The last song share a similar vibe, as well as vocal interplay. It moves that they more deliberate sway common in shoegazing black metal.  More black metal bands need to do drugs, I will round it down to a 9 as there emerges a uniformity to their sound, but what they have woven here is impressive in terms of caring about songs and establishing a dynamic mood. 

Oranssi Pazuzu : "Värähtelijä"

The Finnish band's fourth album finds the band having drifted further out this time into the sonic seas of the psyche. The vocals scream out from the jangling chaos that still manages to be as heavy as black metal, perhaps even more so than the previous album. If you are going to open an album with a 12-minute song this is how you do it. It keeps building like a flood that is washing you away. At the nine minute mark things break down, but stay very dark and driven. They take on a droning groove not unlike one Swans might employ on "Lahja" the low rasped gurgle of the vocals scowl up from the darkness, before they take you into a much more chaotic abyss. The fact things stay so dark really helps the case for the title track. The guitar lets up even further on the tone and strays away from the typical metal over drive which is a welcome change and allows the guitar lines to develop more melody. But where the two songs that follow the opener don't live up is in the compositional sense. They are looser jams that tend to hang on the one them, it works better on the title track than the previous song and isn't a complaint as much of an observation.

They return to a more black metal attack on "Hypnotisoitu Viharukous". This doesn't let up until past the song's midway point and the guitar backs off into a shoe-gazing-like slathering of effects with the fuzzed-out bass left to do most of the dirty work. The song that follows this one finds the bass player once again as the song's cement providing a strong rubbery groove for all the other craziness to erupt over. This is heavier in more of a sludge-like manner than black metal, the only element that remains black metal lies in the vocals. The song does descend into a sprawl of white noise that might have been time put to better use. The builds back up into a slow crazy noise-covered groove, that makes me think of the supergroup Twilight. "Havuluu" keeps things on the crazy train, as it spirals into a dizzy drone that slowly gets heavy each cycle downward. They prove they haven't forgotten about black metal, and even if they revert to the blast beat it's an effective use of the dynamic.

They back off into more exotic tones for the closing song. This is largely noise and droning until midway into things as it builds up and grow darker. The beats are more tribal and less groove-oriented, if you are on a ton of drugs I suppose it would put you in a trance. I like the mood they create, but it's not as engaging as the first song. This album comes on strong and the band has forged a new path for themselves that finds this closer to black metal than their last album, but sometimes gets lost in the confusion of its own sonic maze. This is an impressive feat in and of it self and your perspective of this depends on if you need songs or you need a trance-like state for yoga on acid. I'll give it a 8.5, the first song has everything I could want from black metal, so it sets the bar too high for the rest of the album. Check the song below and decide for yourself when 20 Buck Spin unleashes this on Feb 26th.