Oranssi Pazuzu

Finland's Oranssi Pazuzu fuse black metal with psychedelic rock, space rock, and progressive metal, framing their purpose in these terms: "To conjure sounds from the dark corners of space and mind." After issuing their debut Muukalainen Puhuu in 2007, the band has avoided repeating any prior album. The Finnish moniker for an orange bodily emanation of the Babylonian demon has steered clear of any set formula; instead each release stands out for its exploratory character and its evolution beyond genre boundaries. On the widely praised 2016 album Värähtelijä the musicians expanded their range by incorporating Krautrock, the electric voodoo funk of Miles Davis, stoner doom metal, thrash, and post-metal. Even amid abundant twenty-first-century psych textures, the music remains darker than nearly any other contemporary work, owing largely to the unearthly, often described as Satanic, vocals of founder and guitarist Jun-His. Their 2019 release Live at Roadburn 2017 captured a performance now viewed as one of the festival's most absorbing and inventive in its history.

The group came together in 2007 across two Finnish cities 187 kilometers apart—Tampere and Seinäjoki—centered on Juho Vanhanen (known as Jun-His for vocals and guitar), Ontto on bass, Korjak on drums, Evill on synthesizers, and Moit on guitar. In their earliest months the members began composing pieces that merged diverse influences in an effort to evoke and replicate varied states of mental cosmos. They tracked their first album in 2008 inside Korjak's family cabin. The outcome, Muukalainen Puhuu, appeared on Violent Journey Records in 2009 and was followed in 2010 by the split LP Split alongside Candy Cane. Their second full-length, the 2011 conceptual album Kosmonument about a drifter adrift in the void, introduced them to listeners on the far side of the Atlantic. The ambitious 2013 effort Valonielu, issued by Svart, found the band collaborating with London-based producer and engineer Jaime Gomez Arellano. Värähtelijä, their fourth studio album, arrived in February 2016 and earned universal praise from both press and listeners, registering a median score above 90 percent across outlets.

Moit departed shortly before touring began and was succeeded later that year by Domovoyd guitarist Niko Lehdontie, who performs as Ikon. In 2017 Spinefarm reissued the 2011 album Kosmonument along with the EPs Farmakologinen and Kevät/Värimyrsky while the band circled the globe. They appeared at numerous metal festivals on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably Roadburn, whose widely circulated set drew enthusiastic commentary from critics in Australia and Asia alike. In 2019 Oranssi Pazuzu and doom proggers Dark Buddha Rising were invited by Roadburn to merge their approaches onstage under the Waste of Space Orchestra banner. The performance yielded the pitch-black prog-rock work Syntheosis, released that April on Svart; reviewers replaced earlier references to Mayhem and Darkthrone with favorable comparisons positioning both acts as heavier contemporary counterparts to the classic European prog outfits Magma, Focus, and Eloy. October saw Roadburn issue a limited-edition recording of the celebrated 2017 festival appearance. The next April the band delivered the extreme experimental visceral prog-metal album Mestarin Kynsi (The Master's Claw) via Nuclear Blast.