UMUR "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.

adg211288 Oranssi Pazuzu, of Finland, are a rare breed of black metal act. They play what can only be described as psychedelic black metal. Psychedelic black metal as a genre is not something I don't see used to describe bands or anything, but actually finding an artist that genuinely plays it, at least to the level of what Oranssi Pazuzu do, is much more rare. Apart from these guys the only other band I'd say genuinely plays it is Greek act Hail Spirit Noir, who gave me my first taste of what this style could offer.

Oranssi Pazuzu actually predate Hail Spirit Noir, having released their first two studio albums before Hail Spirit Noir put out their first, so they could well be the originators of this style. At the very least I haven't managed to find a third genuine psychedelic black metal band yet. That's definitely a shame as between them the two bands are producing some really interesting black metal and do things completely different to each other. Värähtelijä (2016) is Oranssi Pazuzu's fourth full-length album.

If Värähtelijä didn't have such a harshness to it the album would probably be considered to belong to the atmospheric black metal genre as the band very much focus on building an atmosphere here, compared to the more direct song-writing approach used on their previous album Valonielu (2013). It definitely has elements of it though. I'd say that their influence from psychedelic music also draws on the space rock sub-genre. At least its a spacey kind of vibe that I get from this album. Their song-writing tends to focus on longer compositions with the notable exceptions of Lahja and Hypnotisoitu viharukous. Three of the seven tracks pass the ten minute barrier including the 17:39 long Vasemman käden hierarkia.

I do find the individual compositions on the album to blend together somewhat though, as the band's style has a hypnotic quality to it. I'd say that's the main appeal of the album, though for me their style proves to be less immediate in terms of enjoyment compared to what Hail Spirit Noir play, or indeed prior album Valonielu, which I instantly found to be more accessible than this one, though I would say this one is ultimately the more interesting release. Värähtelijä has proven a very rewarding album to keep coming back to though, but at the same time it's not an album I've felt that I'd want to play that often, only when the mood strikes. For what it does, it's very good stuff and makes me want to hear more black metal acts adding such strong psychedelic influences into their music. There's a wealth of potential for this stuff if this album is anything to go by.