UMUR "Muukalainen Puhuu" is the debut full-length studio album by Finnish experimental/psychadelic black metal act Oranssi Pazuzu. The album was released through Violent Journey Records in April 2009. Translated from Finnish to English the title of the album means "Alien Speaks".

The music on "Muukalainen Puhuu" is quite unique IMO. The basis in the music is raw and simple black metal in the vein of Darkthrone, but with an experimental and psychadelic twist. The early seventies Krautrock scene and especially Can is a big influence. The vocals are raspy, extreme and delivered in a quite convincing manner. The tempo is mostly mid-paced and there are only very few faster sections on the album. The atmosphere is tripped out and spacy and the use of vintage keyboards (lots of organ) really give the music an organic feel. Some of the songs like "Dub Kuolleen Porton Muistolle" ("Dub for a Memory of a Dead Whore (of Babylon)") and "Kerettiläinen Vuohi" ("Heretic Goat") have some lengthy and rather noisy krautrock styled repetitive parts. The title track is a bit different from the rest of the songs with it´s ambient (no drums on this one) atmospheric experimental sound. "Myöhempien Aikojen Pyhien Teatterin Rukoilijasirkka" ("The Praying Mantis of the Theathre of Latter-day Saints") is in the other end of the spectra as it is probably the track on the album that´s closest to traditional raw black metal. It´s also the track that features the fastest tempo. Even in this song there are twists and turns that keeps it from being "regular" black metal though. The lyrics are in the Finnish language and it´s something I hope Oranssi Pazuzu will continue with on future releases because it gives the album a mystical aura and quite frankly it just sounds really charming. The meaning of the words are of course lost on me but this is one of those cases where it´s a minor issue.

The musicianship on the album is excellent. The vocals may be extreme but they are full of expression, the rythm section create that repetitive hypnotic krautrock atmosphere to perfection and the guitars and keyboards bring some texture and memorability into the mix. This is of course not your average commercial pop tunes, but still there are melodic content enough to satify those who can´t live without memorable hooks.

The production is really succesful. It´s raw enough to satisfy the metal head yet very organic which should appeal to the psych fans. The marriage between the genres is completed by the sound production.

"Muukalainen Puhuu" is an excellent and quite unigue album by Oranssi Pazuzu and personally I´m really happy that I discovered their music. They definitely stick out from the crowd with their original style and innovative approach. I find "Muukalainen Puhuu" to be a very recommendable album to people who think that a blend of raw and simple black metal and experimental/psychadelic rock sounds interesting. A 4 - 4.5 star (85%) rating is well deserved. One of the best releases for me in 2009.

* On a sidenote. Feast on that beautiful cover artwork. One of the most intriguing covers I´ve seen in a while.

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.