CMX - Vainajala (1998)

1) Iskusävelmä; 2) Surunmurhaaja; 3) Vainajala; 4) Vierasta viljaa; 5) Ei yksikään; 6) Taivaan lapset; 7) Sillanrakentaja; 8) Laulu palavasta linnusta; 9) Eufrat; 10) Kirjeitä paratiisista; 11) Arkangeli; 12) Vanha talvitie

CMX kick off their next chapter with an honest, loud rock album.

Key tracks: "Surunmurhaaja", "Taivaan lapset", "Arkangeli"

Vainajala is a skin shedding moment for CMX. After an early career full of divergent musical strands, the band have figured out who they are and more importantly, how to blend all that raw power, emotional grace and trickster prog flair into a singular sound that represents CMX above anything else. Along with that, they’ve got a new drummer with Tuomas Peippo whose machine-like precision serves as the perfect technical and diverse backbone to the band's growing ideas. Unlike the prior handful of albums which had long gestation periods due to the band figuring things out within the studio, the idea for Vainajala was to go with gut feeling and capture the spark quickly. Faith No More’s Billy Gould was enlisted as the producer as CMX holed up in a Lapland cabin for a mere couple of weeks to crank out the record, and the change in the man behind the desk to someone brand new instead of the old friends who produced the prior albums has arguably been just as important to the band in helping them forge ahead a new path. In the greater scheme of things Vainajala was a bit of a detour in itself and rather unrepresentative of the next stretch of records, but it was a palate cleanser, wiping the slate clean for the next steps.

Funny enough, Vainajala turned out to be an honest rock album. It’s not the much dreaded "back to basics" - CMX’s basics were never like this - but it is an intentionally more straightforward album, even if the prog rock tendencies creep in subtly by way of understated time signature shenanigans and little segments like the non sequitur breakdown of lead single "Ei yksikään". It's an album lead by big guitars and the sturdy classic four-member rock band groove, with A.W. Yrjänä alternating between a shouting maniac and a charismatic frontman as he adopts both sides of his frontman persona - it's music that's meant to be played loud, ideally in front of people. After the line-up changes and restless changes in direction, its role is a succint and instinctive re-introduction for the band as well as a needed re-focus to line the sights up for the future. As these things often go, it’s not a particularly nuanced or deep album, and you can easily say that not only has much of the band's former edge been toned down, but that there is definitely a really fine line between the album as it stands and a safe, radio-friendly rock album - by the Finnish definition of one, at least. 

 
Vainajala holds its ground because ultimately it’s a (pun intended) rock solid record. The songwriting favours punchy hooks over artistic flair but the little prog tangents and Yrjänä's lyricism (can't say I've heard many rock songs tap onto the Kalevala meter like "Laulu palavasta linnusta" does) keep it distinguishably CMX-esque. There's always been a good couple get-to-the-chorus rock jams per album and CMX know how to carve their crooked melodies within a more foot tap inviting structure, and this just happens to be an album full of them for once. Gould's production isn't flashy but it's got some muscle to it which befits the chosen direction, and the band-centric arrangements mean that the few keyboard and backing vocal parts that do appear sound all the more lush. There's no new ideas for CMX within Vainajala, but you are effectively dealing with a great rock band playing snappy rock songs with a renewed spirit, and it's hard to complain about it - especially when the hits keep coming. A handful of these reach all the way to the hallowed canon: the twinkling "Taivaan lapset" is exhuberantly melodic, "Laulu palavasta linnusta" fiercely battering rams ahead, and "Vanha talvitie" is one of the band's all time great closers, lurching forward full of deep melancholy and purging volume, its ever-towering coldness growing into handsome heights. CMX work excellently as "just" a rock band as well, which Vainajala demonstrates excellently. It's only a few times where it feels like the band is starting to run on thin ince, namely the schlager-leaning "Sillanrakentaja" and "Kirjeitä paratiisista" (which wastes its powerful opening, leading on from the interlude/intro "Eufrat") lean a little too close to less exciting radio rock waters; I've also never been too taken by the prog-punk gremlin "Ei yksikään" despite its memetic scream-along chorus, as it feels like a song trying to be tricky for tricky's sake with its tempo shifts and stop-starts, which end up muddling the tune more than they make it interesting. But they're minor bumps than blemishes, and quickly brushed off. 

That said, some of the songs that stick the hardest are the ones where the band stray from the core thesis. The particularly brilliant "Surunmurhaaja" wraps its manic ruckus within entrancingly atmospheric verses which are unlike anything else on the record, and "Arkangeli" towards the end is a serene acoustic ballad that turns out to be one of the album's stand-out moments, part in due because that contrast is a welcome respite by that point in the runtime, but also because it features one of Yrjänä's most beautiful vocal melodies in the chorus with a particularly fantastic backing vocal part emphasising that melody. "Vierasta viljaa" starts as an acoustic ballad as well to showcase early on that not everything here is guitars-to-eleven, but when it finally does break out the electrics for its final chorus the effect is magnified and it's one of the boldest parts of the record - the parts you remember the most. And somewhere there lies the distillation of where my overall opinion on Vainajala stands. There's no doubt that it's a really good record, but it's also not an album that I think about when I reach out for CMX. Next to its more flamboyant peers it starts to grow pale and its most interesting parts are the ones where the band do something a little more different than what the rest of the album actually stands for. 

I don't like rating "against" an album because it's a more straightforward rock record - my tastes are nowhere near complicated enough to even pretend I could do that with a good conscience - but as good as CMX are playing things loud and straight, it's not where their greatest appeal lies. Vainajala is an album of bangers and there's a time and place for that - but I actually associate some of these songs more closely with their places in later compilation albums than this actual tracklist. Nonetheless, it sets off CMX's next chapter with a blast, and that re-energising would serve the band brilliantly going forward. That alone gives it a place in the pantheon.

Rating: 7/10

Physical corner: In a typical CMX fashion, a basic jewel case with a standard-good booklet featuring some artwork, the lyrics and a band shot. You've been here before with these guys, you know the drill.