1) Eteläisen tähtitaivaan kartoitus; 2) Pedot; 3) Uusi ihmiskunta; 4) Mustat siivet yli taivaan; 5) Kain; 6) Suojelusperkele; 7) Taivaanääreläiset; 8) Näkyvän valon olennot; 9) Tuulenkosija; 10) Syysmyrkkylilja; 11) Sanansaattaja; 12) Valoa nopeammat koneet
Another palate cleanser, but this time just as cohesive and impactful as the more conceptual pieces.
Key tracks: "Mustat siivet yli taivaan", "Kain", "Sanansaattaja"
The CMX cycle holds water and after the tightly cohesive conceptual hell of Aion, the subsequent Pedot is simply a selection of songs held loosely together where individual moments take precedence over the whole- but this time the influence of the preceding album hasn't subsided completely. Pedot is an altogether more freewheeling experience in spirit than its older sibling but it shares its soundscape with Aion and with its often-segued songs creating tangible links from mood to mood and style to style, the focus on the greater whole ends up sneaking in small, almost unintentionally light ways. The previous CMX palate cleanser albums were clear 180-degree breaks from the albums that preceded them, whereas Pedot is like Aion's little brother, sharing the same DNA but growing up differently.
The one common thing is that Pedot is just as muscular as its big brother, with Rauli Eskolin returning to man the production desk and making sure that every guitar riff, drum fill and baritone scream from A.W. Yrjänä leave a tangible impact when they boom through the speakers. The songs, however, are a different beast. Aspects of the depths explored on Aion are present, in particular the title track's scifi-metal which is just about the heaviest thing CMX have committed to tape, growing wilder and meaner with each time signature tick; Yrjänä's sped-up vocals after the first verse is the most mental moment across the two records, even taking into account Aion's general insanity. Pedot can get heavy if it wants - but mostly it treats that aspect of CMX as a side flavour that throws an unexpected flair into an otherwise overwhelmingly melodic record.
CMX have for the longest time masterfully balanced between melody and weight, but here that combination is straight-up exciting. I want to call it joyous even, although that would perhaps give the wrong impression of the album's mood: there's a lot of ache and sorrow throughout the album lyrically and you could consider it a Trojan horse that delivers its melancholy hidden behind unusual wild abandon. It sounds lush even when it wants to crawl into a corner. "Kain" aches with forlorn and ancient melancholy, "Taivaanääreläiset" sounds like the moment the sky falls down and sun falls dark until the spiralling synth arpeggios appear and pull it to safety - and they're both built around such widescreen melodies that they embrace the listener and soar mightily through the sky like grand statements. "Sanansaattaja" is a song ostensibly about holding onto a sense of false hope even as everything looks intensely futile and yet its chorus radiates with a sense of freedom, pushing down the throttle with wind in its hair. It's the moment that arguably defines Pedot the best.
Even when the band do add their signature
edge onto things they still retain that resonant kind of immediacy -
the hard turns and aggressive push of "Suojelusperkele" hide behind a
starkly emotional giant, and how the band turn the chorus of the
ramshackle chugga-chugga-rhythm gremlin "Näkyvän valon olennot" into
such a sharp and cunningly catchy moment is mad genius in action. At its most direct Pedot shows a glimpse of a world where CMX are a more
straightforward alternative rock band, with the majestic choruses of
"Mustat siivet yli taivaan" not being too far away from Manic Street Preachers at their most towering and the bright and atmospheric "Syysmyrkkylilja" bringing the band's R.E.M.
fan club merits onto the surface the clearest they've ever been, with
its Peter Buck-esque guitar lines ran through a CMX filter. Turns out,
they are absolutely great at being such a band when the mood strikes, and Pedot turns out to hit really hard because of the careful balance between honestly melodic and still eccentric.
Pedot is also one of those albums where you could easily go ahead and list through it song-by-song, and it'd actually benefit from it because everything sounds so distinct and brings something different to the table. There's a range of ideas tucked between the celestially vast piano ballad "Eteläisen tähtitaivaan kartanot" (this is the only CMX album that starts with a whisper, not a bang) and the similarly cosmically soaring but wistfully world-weary "Valoa nopeammat koneet", the most beautifully resigned CMX have ever sounded as they finish the album with an intergalactic sigh. Guitar colossi, noisy shamblers, prog pastiches ("Tuulenkosija" with a flute solo, "Sanansaattaja" with a sax solo) - Pedot does a lot of things, but compare this to the most obvious counterpart i.e. Isohaara a few years before and the difference is obvious in how both albums go about their stylistic stretching. Isohaara pulled together just as many disparate ideas as Pedot, more if we're honest, but it also sounded like the ragtag quilt it was. Pedot sticks together as a cohesive entity where even the token radio single ("Uusi ihmiskunta", which slaps in its in-your-faceness and gets wonderfully mighty when the last choruses hit) works in context. Part of it is thanks to the production which treats each song with the same powerful seasoning, but in their heart all these songs are anthems and that's what ties them together. Not in the sense that they're all big gig-friendly crowd pleasers, but in how they all attempt to reach for a greater connection. It's definitely a large and loud record, but the more I think about the more it strikes me as a resonantly emotional one, closer to the listener than the usually somewhat personally distant CMX approach.
There is a personal element at play here, in that I got into CMX during my university years and for some reason I latched onto Pedot particularly hard when trawling through their already-immense back catalogue, and to this day there are parts of this record that remind me of idle moments in student halls and getting stuck in traffic on the bus home. It's an evocative album, and the music within has made it all the more easier to stick those memories to it. Pedot is unassuming: many of its hardest-hitting moments are slow-burn love affairs that wait patiently for the spark to ignite with the listener, it doesn't contain any obvious CMX classics ("Kain" and "Uusi ihmiskunta" were pretty big hits, but anything could've been a hit at this stage for them) and between Aion and Talvikuningas it practically fades into the background with its simple-presenting rock songs. But it's rewarding, with each of its rising cascades of choruses eliciting awe and its quietly burning despair converting into songs so enthusiastic and effortlessly inspired that the mix of emotions is an arrow aimed right in the heart. It's as if they looked at the selection of hits and fan favourites across their career, which often have been the outliers in their respective albums, and decided to carve an album in their shape. It sneaks in unexpectedly as one of their best.
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