Finnish metal outfit Oranssi Pazuzu spent May 2026 on tour in the United States, their first U.S. tour since 2019. I caught them at Reggies Rock Club in Chicago on May 17th, where they blew away the crowd with their unique and mesmerizing music. Music which, in broad terms, we can say is something like psychedelic black metal, but which is really quite singular and escapes categorization. The presentation itself was almost like a ritual; the room was awash in pulsing light while the band and audience together remained trance-like and locked into the underlying rhythms. Very little punctuated the end of one song and the beginning of the next, the sounds swirling and bubbling like the eddies of some unseen and otherworldly primordial soup. You do not need any chemical enhancement to accompany this band. If you have any interest at all in avant-garde metal, do check them out.
