The winner of this year’s unofficial ”Most Esoteric Name” contest, Oranssi Pazuzu had the honour of cracking open the relocated Sue Stage on Saturday.
The anointed engineers of cosmic darkness have to date released two full-length albums to celebrate the darker venues of space and time with their psychedelic black metal, and even if the slot wasn’t optimal for these kind of moods, the band did excellent work in creating a brooding atmosphere of menace and other-wordly threat.
The Sue tent was not even close to being full, which to my mind is a shame, for such a unique combination of styles has rarely been so smoothly mixed without any unintentional rough edges. The jarring guitars and the sounds of unspeakable creatures of untold aeons being born have hardly been so closely paralled before in Ilosaarirock.
From the hypnotic beginning of Sienipilvi (“Mushroom Cloud”) to festering swamp of Uusi olento nousee (“New Creature Rises”), through Kerettiläinen vuohi (“Heretical goat”) and beyond, all the way to the feverish end, Oranssi Pazuzu leaves the listeners with existential questions, but offers no answers or solutions. Only the certainty that in the grand scheme of things, humankind is an insignificant speck on the face of the universe.
Text: Jari Rytkönen
Picture: Nuutti Turkki
