Orange Pazuzu is a wicked strange band. Hailing from Finland, they’ve always been described to me as an avant-garde black metal band. I can certainly hear the vanguard aspect of their sound, and agree it is ambitious, but for the life of me I don’t understand how this can still be called black metal. That said, when examining the acidic perspiration of their production, the spine-clawing angles of their guitar work, their employment of restless wailing synths, and the raspy aural foam generated by Jun-His’s tarp-pit-alligator vocals, I’m at a loss for a better way to describe them. Black metal it is! Mestarin Kynsi is the band’s fifth LP and sees them continuing to press against the limits of extreme and heavy music in fascinating ways. Here we have surprisingly fitting flashes of psychedelic rock that meld seamlessly into melancholic renditions of R’nB, jazz, and industrial music that will delightfully tickle your spine at the same time that it chillingly drains your soul into a realm of shadow and mystery. “Tyhjyyden sakramentti” is filled with frigid intrigue that plays out through warping celestial noise and cautious grooves before breaking into a nightmarish jazz-funk meltdown a third of the way through its runtime. Malevolent synth bawls flush the tense and distended chamberous crypt hymn “Oikeamielisten Sali” out into the blinding moonlight to be seen in its full, miserable majesty. Later the industrial backfire of “Kuulen ääniä maan alta” will capture you with its trance-inducing rhythm, toying with you like a hapless sinner in clutches Chernabog’s palm. If you are looking for something to set the mood while you stew in your misanthropy, the devil’s fire trench of “Uusi teknokratia” employs more traditional second-wave black metal grooves to pull you along a dank, moss choaked corridor, and past the threshold of a bottomless revenue, where it will cast you to your fate, falling through a rush of biting, icy winds until your skin turn black from exposure and begins flacking like old lead paint. Mestarin Kynsi will test your sanity like few other albums released this year, and even though its trial is pitiless, it will keep you returning to feel the bite of its mind-cleaving blade again and again, in succession, in perpetuity.
Grab a copy from Nuclear Blast here.