1) Johdatus salatieteisiin; 2) Sika ja perkele; 3) Nahkaparturi; 4) Kaikki nämä kädet; 5) Götterdämmerung; 6) Kuolemattomuuden ääni; 7) Pyydä mahdotonta; 8) Pyörivät sähkökoneet; 9) Taivas ja helvetti; 10) Voittamaton; 11) Suuri äiti; 12) Kolmas Johannes; 13) Hiljaisuuden pelko; 14) Liekkisusi ja sulkakäärme; 1993 CD Edition bonus tracks: Raivo EP (1989): 15) Lintu; 16) Rituaali; 17) Syvä vesi; 18) Jumalan ruoska; 19) Raivo; 20) Hiki; 21) Kolme näkyä; 22) Anathema; 23) Maailmoiden välissä;
A weird ass punk album which, while fun, is not something I unfortunately vibe with.
Key tracks: "Sika ja perkele", "Nahkaparturi", "Taivas ja helvetti"
It's a hard one for me to rate, this, because Kolmikärki is one of those cases where I understand its aims and respect it for them, but its chosen style just happens to be one I don't particularly bat for. CMX in 1990 were still a trio without any of their key members except for the lead man A.W. Yrjänä, and they were three eccentric and furious lads with a crooked sense of humour and a background in extreme punk. By their debut album CMX had already calmed down slightly (compare this to the hardcore punk blast of the Raivo EP from a year earlier, served as the bonus tracks, to hear the difference), but that's calm in a relative sense: for most parts this is still an explosive slice of art-minded punk recorded raw and rough, which isn't a realm I frequent.
Simplifying Kolmikärki by calling it "just" a punk album would be doing it a massive disservice though. Yrjänä, the key songwriter, has always had a love for prog rock and that love would colour so much of their later work, but even this early on and within the most anti-prog of genres, it's leaking to a point that it makes perfect sense how the band would turn out how they did. CMX on Kolmikärki are more like a prog or art rock band doing a punk experiment and while its foundations are in high-speed fury, a smattering of other sounds and genres from completely different ends of the spectrum keep appearing in Kolmikärki like they're leaks from another timeline. It makes for a seriously strange little record - one that starts with four minutes of shaman drums and throat singing ("Johdatus salatieteisiin", translated as "Introduction to the Occult" which is the best song title the first song on the first CMX album could have), and ends similarly with the moody "Liekkisusi ja sulkakäärme" which throws Yrjänä's murmuring vocals into the pile and melodically sounds like someone wrung R.E.M.'s "Time After Time" through a demonic portal. The brightly acoustic singalong "Pyydä mahdotonta" and the oddly earnest stadium torchlight (but not really) moment "Suuri äiti" are possibly even more perplexing given what they're surrounded by.
I didn't mention CMX's particular sense of humour for no reason in the first paragraph, and the combining element across the board is cheeky streak of erratic, risk-averse fun running throughout the record. For all its occasional aggro Kolmikärki never sounds particularly
angry and rather, it's nearly fun, with even the more traditionally
punk-esque songs being fuelled by an unholy sense of outrageousness and
fun, the band coming up with both the wryest and the most over the top
ways of expressing Yrjänä's cryptic lyrics. And then occasionally you can almost hear the band having a mad giggle in the studio at their own tricks, or how else could you explain the hilariously upbeat horn section in "Taivas ja helvetti"? Or the entirety of whatever the hell "Sika ja perkele" is doing, where the fake-out alternative rock intro moves right into a steamrolling punk blast, and just as suddenly it erupts into a funk rock section that wouldn't be amiss on an early Red Hot Chili Peppers album - and the fact that I'm comparing CMX with the Chili Peppers (and on their punkiest of punk days nonetheless) is just as mad as the song itself.
So it is fair to say that I do derive some enjoyment out of Kolmikärki, and it isn't so far removed from the band's later alternative rock/prog days as to completely alienate any listeners who got into them through those records (like me). Even some of the more straightforwardly delivered cuts like "Nahkaparturi" (its titular chant another tick in the bizarre sense of humour list) and the chugging metal-churner "Pyörivät sähkökoneet" do hit in varying degrees. The thing is, this isn't a sound or a genre that in the wider frame excites or resonates with me all that much and towards the last third the album starts losing me completed as it's shown everything it has to offer and even the quirkiness has become less interesting. It's an album I can comfortably listen to but the main question that keeps coming to my head is why would I, when I prefer what CMX have done with all these same quirks later down in their career, and the parts of Kolmikärki that belong to it alone are not ones I get much out of? As far as I can gather Kolmikärki has a positive reputation among people who are generally attuned to this sound and I don't doubt for one moment that the album doesn't deserve any of its accolades. But for the most part, it just isn't doing things that strike a chord with me and the main feeling I take away from it is no feeling whatsoever.
So, the harsh rating here isn't really a condemnation of Kolmikärki, if anything it's a condemnation of my music tastes - these songs and this sound aren't ones that resonate with me, and some kind of resonance is one of the main things I seek in music - so this friendship was unlikely ever really to be. If this didn't belong to the discography of a band whose works I generally really enjoy, I wouldn't have ever felt the need to write any thoughts down about this. So it's not you Kolmikärki, it's me, sorry.
And regarding the bonus tracks, i.e. the Raivo EP, if you take into account everything above and then understand that Raivo is effectively a more primal version of this album and more rooted in the hardcore scene, you can decipher where I stand with it. "Hiki" is the highlight, if you want to call it that. Just not my thing.
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