Review: Oksennus – Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä

Style: experimental, noise, dark ambient, industrial, avant-garde black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Merzbow, Ben Frost
Country: Finland
Release date: 13 June 2025

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Finnish experimental metal artist Oksennus sees a pile of rocks and grinds them to dust in his deconstruction of metal, like a postmodernist would, on his newest release(s): Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä and its sibling EP Naama Ummessa. Metal is broken down to its atoms—distortion, percussion, and vocals—and reassembled in a completely novel way. The shorter of the two EPs, Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä, works within the confines of two tracks, each precisely 13:00 long to construct its cathedral of broken riffs and vomitous¹ vocals. 

Taking up the first half of the release, “Loppu” plays around within a unique, uncompromising atmosphere. Microtonal guitars ramble onward until gurgling vocals à la the Demilich guy on ketamine dominate the foreground—although they often drop into the background as Oksennus use the mix as an ever-shifting playground for which texture dominates. In the background, various “whooshing” noises recall a variety of things: a muted train going “chugga chugga,” shoveling snow, falling down the stairs with an electric guitar. As ominous as the sounds are unusual, Oksennus shatters conceptions of genre by dragging his distinct style of black metal from rawness to beyond—a primally unrefined ambience.

Not until “Tuli” does Oksennus make his most revelatory strides within a strictly metal framework. Beginning with inescapable blast beats in the vein of Plague Organ, he quickly contorts the rhythms into free time atop a buzzsaw guitar. As the track progresses, drum parts collapse at the seams as complex arrangements of percussion are stitched together, seemingly recorded a couple of seconds at a time. Moreover, the demented ambient noise of the first track continues throughout “Tuli” but in increasingly distorted tones—bringing them more firmly into the world of metal along with the blast beats—transitioning between the sound of blowing a raspberry and the droning vibrations of the cicada. Like how the best black metal rebels against religion and/or mankind, Oksennus is a perversion of an inimical power structure, as well.

“There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” – Brené Brown

In Oksennus’ case, they rebel against the human eardrum. Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä is nearly unlistenable without suffering the risk of a migraine, the EP transcending the comprehensive capabilities of the human mind in 2025 CE. The experimental elements mentioned are hardly intentional. The guitars are microtonal because Oksennus doesn’t know how to tune his instrument; the mixing shifts in and out of focus from engineering ineptitude; and the time is free because he can’t even program a drum correctly. Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä is proof that the postmodernists often become satire of themselves (look into Salvatore Garau, for instance). I don’t think that Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä was truly going for something revolutionary nor was his take a postmodernist interpretation of metal intentionally². The world of the experimental, progressive, and avant-garde will always create missteps, and Auringolla Ei Ole Käsiä is chief among them, purely as a result of Oksennus’ radical incompetence in composition and performance.

Recommended tracks: Loppu
You may also like: Jute Gyte, Botanist, Simulacra, Plague Orphan
Final verdict: 2/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Sacrifical Dance – Bandcamp

Oksennus is:
– K. Olavi K.virta

1. Oksennus means “vomit” in Finnish! ↩︎
2.  It’s a testament to how silly postmodernism can be that I bet you believed me for the first chunk of the review. ↩︎