UMUR "Kosmonument" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Finnish post/psychadelic black metal act Oranssi Pazuzu. The album was released in October 2011 by Spinefarm Records. "Muukalainen puhuu (2009)" proved to be a mighty fine debut album mixing equal parts krautrock psychadelia with post black metal. "Muukalainen puhuu" was released on the small label Violent Journey Records while "Kosmonument" has been picked up for release by the larger Finnish label Spinefarm Records, which should help the album´s availability to the fans.

The music on "Kosmonument" is filthy, dark, atmospheric, repetitive, psychadelic and at times quite intriguing. Oranssi Pazuzu have an organic sound that brings a lot to the music. It would be wrong to call this lo-fi or chaotic but it definitely isn´t clean nor pretty either. The vocals are raspy which is one of the most obvious black metal traits on the album, but other than that, and a couple of blast beats, you won´t find much on "Kosmonument" that fall under the catagory of "regular" sounding black metal. This is tripped out and obscure. The kind of music style that makes you uncertain of what to call it.

Compared to the debut album, "Kosmonument" is slightly more psychadelic, chaotic and organic. But Oranssi Pazuzu already had a pretty original style carved on "Muukalainen puhuu" and I´d call "Kosmonument" a continuation of that style rather than a development. The album is a bit long with it´s 66:13 minutes playing time and if you ask me some tracks overstay their welcome by a couple of minutes, but if you don´t mind your music featuring repetitive hypnotic beats/basslines and equally repetitive song structures, I´m not sure it´ll pose a problem to you. Most of the time it doesn´t pose a problem to me either. In fact most of the time those features bring a cool, laid back effect to the music that´s greatly enjoyable. I guess I liked the debut sligthly better than this album, but "Kosmonument" is definitely a worthy purchase too if you enjoy your post-black/extreme metal with a psychadelic twist. A 3.5 - 4 star rating is deserved.

Time Signature Indefinite...

Genre: psychedelic post-black metal

If you are searching for some really weird, dark and psychedelic music, then you can of course go back and listen to the first couple of Alrune Rod albums. But perhaps you are on the lookout for something more recent, and even darker and weirder. Well, then look no more, for you have found it in the form of Oranssi Pazuzu's "Kosmonument".

Drawing in part on black metal aesthetics and sludgy post-metal, Oranssi Pazuzu blatantly approach these types of metal from the perspective of psychedelic rock, which means that "Kosmonument" contains black metal screams, tremolo-picking, blastbeating, sludgy heaviness, spacey and quirky effects, a heavy 70s rock bass and loads of elements from post '68 psychedelic rock. Some tunes are more on the black metal side, such as 'Uusi olento nousee' and 'Loputon tuntematon' with their focus on blastbeating and tremolo-picking (still, you will find that the riff of the former sounds like some sort of siren, while the latter contains some almost bluesy guitar bursts), but mostly Oranssi Pazuzu draw on post-rock/metal and psychedelic rock with many tracks almost bordering on being soundscapes, or at least soundscapish.

A central feature of the album is repetition, and, with the sources of the music on this release being black metal, sludge metal, post-rock/metal, psychedelic rock and other already challenging genres of rock music, "Kosmonument" is not for everyone, and it is a demanding and challenging listen, but once you get into it, you are in for quite a dark musical experience.