Photo by Rainer Paananen / Words by Kurt Orzeck
For more than 15 years, Finland’s artistically accelerated, psych-propelled cosmonauts Oranssi Pazuzu have proven time and time again that they ain’t your dad’s black-metal band. Or your older brother’s or sister’s. Or even dear to the diehard denizens who descend upon every notable metal shindig that swings through the cities closest to them. As awe-striking as it was, Oranssi Pazuzu’s first record, 2008’s Muukalainen puhuu, gave new meaning to the phrase “inauspicious debut”: The band recorded it in the group’s drummer’s family’s cabin. Still following along?
And yet, further supporting the notion that we are living in exceptional times for heavy-music fans of every persuasion, Oranssi Pazuzu are now stronger than ever. No, you probably won’t hear the metal masses shouting their name at shows or see them frothing about the quixotic quintet on YouTube clips. But the band led by vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Juho "Jun-His" Vanhanen are now in the rarer-than-a-blue-moon company of musical acts that have yet to release an unremarkable album. Rising to a seemingly impossible challenge, Oranssi Pazuzu defied expectations yet again last month by pulling their magnum opus out of the band’s proverbial sleeve: Muuntautuja.
It’d be a foolish (but really funny) endeavor to spend your day on the Finnish band’s Wikipedia page, constantly hitting “refresh” to monitor the chart progress of the band’s singles. But even “obscure” bands, which Oranssi Pazuzu isn’t any longer, weep in private over how this singular, supremely unconventional and challenging group appear constitutionally incapable of creating an album that is no less than captivating from start to Finnish (sorry). Surely, musicologists and scientists are joining forces in underground laboratories trying to figure out how this band has developed such a strong command over metal fans who previously thought they had heard every permutation, mutation and abomination of the genre dozens of times before.
We’d be lying if we told you the secret formula to Oranssi Pazuzu’s inter-dimensional, arty, brainy, hypnotic sound. But we did the next best thing, catching up with mad scientist Vanhanen to pick his big brain about his band and the brilliance of Muuntautuja. Sure, we gained some valuable insights, but in classic Oranssi Pazuzu fashion, we delved deeper into subjects like the intersection of music and painting; subliminal messaging; crafting records as world-building experiments; partaking in psychedelics; and far, far, beyond the realm of rote rock subject matter.
That’s a stunning painting hanging on the wall behind you. Is it the album art for 2011’s Kosmonument, Oranssi Pazuzu’s second album?
Vanhanen - Yeah, that’s the original 3-metre painting. The artist who painted it, Olli Kiviluoto, died in 2020. I heard that a guy was selling it, so I managed to get my hands on it for pretty cheap. It was cool to get it in my home.
It resembles H.R. Geiger’s Alien designs of the Alien movies, especially in the latest installment of the franchise, when the crew goes into the Romulus and Remus modules. Was Kiviluoto going for that look?
Vanhanen - He was into Geiger for sure. I think he even bicycled from Finland to Museum HR Geiger in Switzerland.
Do you typically choose artwork for Oranssi Pazuzu albums after the music is completed? Or is it the converse situation, in which artwork you see inspires the music you write?
Vanhanen - Usually we start thinking about the album art after the demo phase for an album, toward the end of the project, and then we pick an artist. On Muuntautuja, one of our really good friends, Jenna Haapaharju, said she had an idea and asked us if she could try it out. We said, “Of course.” It worked perfectly because we were going for a sound that could switch around in your head, depending on what mood you were in when you were listening to the album.
We wanted Muuntautuja to have a transforming effect. “Muuntautuja” is a Finnish word that refers to transformation in terms of shape-shifting. The artist really got that and also made the artwork so that when you look at it at different times and angles, you maybe see different things and shapes every time. That felt really suitable for the context of the album. It usually goes that way. We pick artists we really trust, who understand what we're doing. The best-case scenario is when the artist expands on what we did with the album and brings a layer that we hadn't thought about.
Similarly, and I've listened to all your albums many times, you seem to provide enough space to allow the listener to interpret the material on their own, as opposed to being more didactic and telling listeners what it all means. That seems striking because it suggests an artist is gracious enough to allow their audience to perceive a message or interpretation that might stray from or even clash with the artist’s own interpretation.
Vanhanen - It is, but we really trust our process and that, if we build as many layers as possible (and I don’t necessarily mean complex melodies or rhythms), the interpretations inevitably come through those layers. I really believe that listening to music and perceiving art in general is up to the listener’s surroundings quite a bit. What do you take in? Through that, hopefully the listener will have multiple interpretations and have their own kind of participation in the art in that way as well. But I know what you’re saying.
I spoke recently with Portugal’s Gaerea, and they described their new album, Coma, similarly in terms of layering. But you've been executing this more layered, richer approach to making black metal since Oranssi Pazuzu formed in 2007, correct? Have you gradually increased this richness, for a lack of a better term, through the scale of your art and vision?
Vanhanen - When we started, we did a lot by accident. What we've discussed more over the years is wanting to insert spells inside our music, almost. I'm an Atheist; what I mean by “spells” are things that have a strong influence on you through abstract levels. I think we've gone from the very literal level to the more abstract over the course of our albums. It becomes, for us and hopefully the listeners, more interesting when it's more abstract, because you can't really put your finger on what you’re hearing. What really excites me nowadays about art and music is how, when you can't explain something or really put your finger on it, it feels more powerful. My favorite experiences at concerts, when I'm listening to other bands and artists, are exactly those moments when you can't really pinpoint a certain thing. You can think, “Oh, that's a good melody or that's a good riff,” but it goes beyond that, toward something that I don't understand but that sounds so powerful.
For me, that’s also the turn-on with darker shades of music, the darkness of the music itself, and black-metal aesthetics. It's like there is a power inside the darkness that makes listening to the music a cathartic experience as well. That's really something we're looking for in music. We’ve been going in a more mysterious direction with each subsequent album. We have a common interest in that, as band members, striving toward things that are really hard to explain or maybe even inexplicable inside the art. That's also identifiable in paintings and other art forms that I find interesting.
Would you go as far as to use the term “subliminal,” at least in some of the situations where art appears inexplicable? Subliminal messaging in art can be well-defined but difficult to identify, which would feed that same hunger to the listener or observer, right? Additionally, do you feel like a lot of other black-metal bands don’t have a special relationship to or connection with art in the way that Oranssi Pazuzu does?
Vanhanen - I don't find ourselves to be unique in that way. All the sounds that come to one's ear are interpreted by that person, and that is art. What is maybe different with us in some respects at least is that we take a lot of influences from outside metal. So I wouldn't see us being anything special. We're just trying to make art. But what you said about subliminal messaging is something I've been thinking about more and more. It's also connected, I think, to the surroundings that we talked about. You can't really control what your listener is like, what the state of mind of that person is.
But what you can do is … I used to think when I was young that album cover art and live shows and stuff like lights don't have anything to do with the music. But I think I was really wrong on that, because those are the only resources you can use to set up the surroundings for the listener. It's part of the world-building, and I think everything like that will subliminally influence what you’re doing. I probably don't think about a lot of stuff I've been listening to when I'm writing, or we as a band are writing, but I'm sure they will come through subliminally. Art in general is so complex that even the artist is never fully in control of what they’re putting into their work. And I think it's the same with the listener. You can have a vision that is relatively clear, but where all the building blocks for that vision are quite mysterious and so complex that you can't really pinpoint it all. But again, that's what makes it really interesting.
I'm fascinated by what you’re saying about building a world with your art. Doesn’t that suggest that you've got the constant, which is the music, and then the variable, which is the listener, who has their own interpretation of the constant. Consequently, when the variable and the constant are combined, the listening experience becomes something new every time. But if you're able to architect or build certain aspects of the surrounding, maybe like in Christopher Nolan’s film Inception, then there is definition, to a degree, to the environment that you want to invite the listener into. It all seems pretty profound, frankly. Did you ever, as a kid or at any other point in your life, play Led Zeppelin records in reverse or anything like that? Did you ever get into looking for subliminal or secret messages when the idea was widely discussed during the Satanic Panic years?
Vanhanen - I didn't have to do that, because when I was already a teenager in the ‘90s, religious people where we grew up in Tampere in Finland had already made this cassette in the ‘80s where they tried to show that all rock music is from Satan. They had their cassette explained and showed all the backward messages. So I didn't have to turn around anything. I think the kids were even more enthusiastic about that when they heard that cassette. So it was really funny too. But yeah, of course, after that, it was really cool to try to find those things. They were finding a lot of stuff that was really only in their head.
Was Satanic Panic a witch hunt where you grew up as much as it was in other parts of the world?
Vanhanen - I think it was the worst in the U.S. People got really scared. But yeah, sure, it's spread to Europe and in Finland. But I think like, it was like, maybe like there were a few years when it was actually talked in the news. Every time when kids feel shitty and do things to show that, it's really easy to blame something else so they can say it’s not our society's fault. When the 2000s began, it started fading off, and people started appreciating more complex explanations for kids doing things to rebel or express that they weren’t feeling so great.
We’ve been discussing mass social hallucination, but what about the hallucinatory effects as they pertain to Oranssi Pazuzu’s music? Do you feel like the concept of hallucination is ever-present in your music?
Vanhanen - It's a huge part of it. We kind of perceive all of our albums as trips. There's a term in Finnish that translates to “drama curve.” It’s similar to a trip: Things are happening where you can start leaning on some details more, and then ... the vocals and the lyrics snap you out of it and function as a map of it. And then, how you take the part of the song to the next part and snap out of it again. We want the listener to be hypnotized in the rhythm of our music. And then, the kraut-rock rhythm that all of us in the band love is very effective in using those hypnotic rhythms. The listener and ourselves as well, when we get really hypnotized by that, you can start to pay attention to other things around you, like walls are melting. Inside the realm of the music, there's still this hypnotic thing that you can vibe with. And then, something happens that brings you somewhere else. I love music in general, and when I listen to it, it's like when I'm really fixated on some deep, detailed thing, and then suddenly the band or the artist does something that goes somewhere else. And then I'm not sure what happened in the previous part anymore at that point. I'm just taken somewhere else and start to wander around there. So again, world-building is super-important for the kind of music that we're playing or trying to do.
Does one particular trip stand out in your mind as being far more intense, scary or emotionally charged than the others? Or do you view them all as having had more or less the same emotional impact?
Vanhanen - Yeah, in terms of what we do in music and also any sort of tripping, you can have different periods. Something can start off super-nasty, but that's usually because there's something that you have to go through in order to have catharsis or accept certain things. Our music sometimes deals with existential threats, what goes on in your mind about death and your ego, and how you have to do a certain amount of accepting things in your life, until the end of your life, actually. It's really interesting to use your art in order to go through those existential thoughts and horrors. And then, when you spotlight those things, when you go through them, you can then accept that they are there and they're maybe not such boogeymen. That's the style of our horror as well. We don't deal with Satans or ghosts or whatever. It's more about what's inside your mind, and how you are connected to the cosmos and universe, and how absurd and surreal it is that we are living on this planet and have evolved from tiny microscopic things to humans over billions of years. Everything is so … I don't know, abstract and absurd.
What you’re describing sounds like how a listener, viewer or reader might engage with a story. There's a certain slow build, different plot points and certain mile markers in the course of the story being told. And then there's the epiphany. After that, there's the denouement and then eventually a conclusion. Do you feel like you adhere to a similar structure in your music writing? Or does music allow you to play around with that structure in a way that you can, say, introduce the epiphany earlier on and then question if it were really true? You see what I'm saying?
Vanhanen - Yeah, I think it's really interesting to think of doing an album like. I really love albums. I'm not really into songs that much. Of course, I love pop songs as well. I need my Depeche Mode song once in a while. But I love albums in full. It’s a really cool way to tell a story. Especially on this new album but also in general, we don't tell specific stories. But I like what you said, that there are narrative structures. You start from somewhere, something happens. And because of that, the next thing is going to feel different than it would have if you had just skipped to that track. There is a drama curve in everything, and I love my drama curves in films and books as well. In those art forms especially, I don't think there wouldn't be drama curves, this script of bigger things and multiple layers. If there were, all the books and movies would suck. But again, music is more abstract, of course. If no one else kind of gets that but us, it doesn't matter. You can interpret our music any way you want.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
The latest album from Oranssi Pazuzu, Muuntautuja, is currently available via Nuclear Blast Records - HERE
