VÄRÄHTELIJÄ

"Värähtelijä" is the 4th full-length studio album by Finnish, Tampere based extreme metal act Oranssi Pazuzu. The album was released through Svart Records in February 2016. It´s the successor to "Valonielu" from 2013.

Stylistically the material on "Värähtelijä" is a continuation of the style the band introduced on their debut full-length studio album "Muukalainen Puhuu (2009)" and further developed on "Kosmonument (2011)" and "Valonielu (2013)". It´s a a psychadelic blackened extreme metal style, which is strongly influenced by 60s/70s psychadelic rock (I hear quite a few 1968-69 Pink Floyd influences in the music and some early Hawkwind too) and 60s/70s Krautrock artists like Faust and especially Can. It´s slow building and hypnotic music featuring repetitive beats and bass lines, raw noisy and some atmospheric mellow guitars, swirling psychadelic synths, and a raspy black metal voice in front. The atmosphere is dense and dark, and even in the most mellow atmospheric parts there is an underlying ominous mood to the compositions, which works really well for Oranssi Pazuzu.

Although the material on the 7 track, 69:13 minutes long album, is obviously composed featuring structures (not regular vers/chorus ones though), which develop throughout the tracks, there is a loose organic feel to how the band perform their parts, which provides the music with an unpredictable jam type element. It´s actually one of their strongest assets, although they sometimes seem to get lost in their jams and let them last a bit too long. That´s of course an aquired taste, so I won´t hold it too much again them, and I am greatly entertained throughout most of the album. I´d like to mention the 17:39 minutes long "Vasemman Käden Hierarkia" as one of the highlights of the album, but all tracks are high quality compositions.

"Värähtelijä" is a well produced release too, which features a dark, gritty, and organic sounding production, which suits the material perfectly. So upon conclusion "Värähtelijä" is another strong release by Oranssi Pazuzu. It´s not a revolution of their by now trademark sound, and maybe a bit of development is in order by now, but it´s hard to deny the great qualities of the release and it doesn´t completely feel like Oranssi Pazuzu have stagnated and don´t have anything new to offer either, so a 4 star (80%) rating is still deserved.