1) Kaikkivaltias; 2) Resurssikysymys; 3) Pretoriaanikyborgit; 4) Vallan haamut; 5) Tähtilaivan kapteeni; 6) Kosmologisen vakion laulu; 7) Parvatin tietäjä; 8) Punainen komentaja; 9) Langennut valo; 10) Quanta; 11) Rusalkai; 12) Kaikkivaltiaan peili
They've gone mad, haven't they? On the positive side, they've gone mad and unleashed an once-in-a-lifetime creature.
Key tracks: "Kaikkivaltias", "Vallan haamut", "Punainen komentaja"
I don't think anyone had CMX recording a sci-fi prog rock opera crossed on their bingo cards, did they?
Let's lay some context down here first. The saga of Talvikuningas had been brewing in the background and on A.W. Yrjänä's mind for years before its eventual ascend. Yrjänä - who by this point had become an active writer and author outside his rock band day job - had been quietly plotting a grand science fiction epic in secret for years, fleshing out the world and the story in his spare time. Sometimes these ideas sneakily rose to the surface and if you've ever wondered why science fiction terminology had become an infrequent but regular occurrence in the post-2000s CMX work, it's because Yrjänä had been writing poetry set in the world of his pet project and sometimes these verses became songs and the songs then retrospectively became early seedlings of Talvikuningas, retrospectively and canonically confirmed to tie into the main story. Most of this poetry remained unreleased though, until the band's court producer of the time Rake Eskolin/Illusion Rake discovered it by happenstance and encouraged Yrjänä to turn it into an album. And the band thought why not - they were riding their musical peak wave and in their search for new ways of approaching the now-regular album writing process, creating an interconnected concept album seemed like a new kind of challenge. Albeit a mad one, and not one their label was particularly thrilled about - the band only got the permission to release the album if the initial edition was an overpriced deluxe box set to cover some of the costs without a catchy lead single in place to secure the usual level of success.
Talvikuningas isn't a straightforward narrative either, it makes you work for it. Its story is non-chronological, told through third party view points and unreliable narrators, swamped with conflicting details and spanning centuries in its timespan. Each song represents a particular written piece in the album's mythology, from military march songs to religious chronicles and cryptic scribblings on wall reliefs. "Kosmologisen vakion laulu" near the center is the only song which explicitly happens somewhere in the reality of the timeline and the bulk of it references the other writings in the other songs like an archivist going through his sources. Go through it all with a fine comb and you can start to decipher excerpts of the story of Maltan Hiram, a cyborg soldier fighting in an endless war in a distant galaxy who rises in ranks to become the fearsome Scarlet Commander, turns his back on his immortal King and his creators soon afterwards, gathers his own forces and brings an end to the dominion that he once served. There's gaps in the story, no real clarity who exactly the titular Winter King/Talvikuningas is and the overall story isn't so much a novel as it is a scattering of ancient tomes in a vast library that you are trying to trace from what actually happened.
It's dense and so is the music. The combination of alternative rock melodies, prog unpredictability and light metal flourishes that CMX have adopted as their own is present as it has been for the last couple of albums, but everything is just so much more impenetrably thick. Everything segues together as intended as "one long song" and so the frequently extensive and expansive songs change tracts and tones at the drop of a beat, peppered with leitmotifts, tracks within tracks, time signatures are a free game, etc. The music - atypically composed for the lyrics rather than the other way around, and in the intended running order - carries the story as much as the words do by accentuating and highlighting the dramatic up- and downlifts. Based on some reviews from non-Finnish speaking sources I've read, it seems like CMX have pulled that off well with people being able to "understand" the pace of the narrative at the very least through the music alone. And understanding the lyrics might just make the songs even more impenetrable because they are first and foremost prose that happens to rhyme and at times Yrjänä's litanies are as high and lofty as the music.
It's impressive. Chaotic, mad and hard to approach, but by golly is it impressive. Talvikuningas is a record that brings awe just by its very existence and how it's been presented. It's an album that demands multiple careful listens simply because there's too much to take on in one go, and what's there isn't the most immediate. It's a colossus of a record that isn't concerned about radio singles or crowd pleasers, it's an insular scribe zealously devoted to its narrative. There are hooks to grab onto, they're just weaved into the greater whole almost as a byproduct rather than as the leading thought behind the songwriting. Much of Talvikuningas refuses to stand comfortably outside its context and parts of it are absolutely present simply to tie connections together (still can't recollect what "Quanta" sounds like if I'm not listening to the song, and I've heard this album countless times).
And, well, they don't need to either. Talvikuningas is one of the few times a band has talked about how they consider their album as a single song (split into multiple tracklist entries for convenience) and it actually makes sense, and isn't just referring to a number of perfectly individual songs with quaint crossfades connecting them together. Nor are Talvikuningas' 12 songs just a single entity obviously either, but the intent is there: that this is a single piece of work intended to be treated as such, and when you do experience it like that you appreciate the best. The moments of serenity and intensity compliment eachother in ways like the perfect bridge connects together an incredible verse and chorus, the denseness of it all becomes practically rewarding when you start connecting the finer touches with the repeating melodies and lyrical callbacks, and the epic finale of "Talvikuninkaan peili" is genuinely hair-raising because it serves as the explosive coda to everything that came before. There are many incredible sections within Talvikuningas' depths: the Pedot-esque atmospherics of "Vallan haamut" that are interspersed with breakdowns each more out-there than the one before (the sudden vocal harmonies, the abrupt twiddly guitar cut...), the suddenly surged choruses of "Kosmologisen vakion laulu" that ride on Peippo's brisk drums, the towering choruses(??) on "Parvatin tietäjä", to name a few. But I have to actively go through the tracks making notes to actually remember which particular designated section those parts belong to, because of how the album keeps transforming within its confinements while also keeping a tight focus on each interconnecting piece working as part of the greater whole.
Of course there are songs that stand completely and proudly on their own two feet; they're just not the focus and you don't really come to long for them either because Talvikuningas demands to be listened whole. But as they do appear, they're ambitious and thrilling. The glorious multi-part opener "Kaikkivaltias" is one of CMX's finest compositions, introducing the Talvikuningas signature riff which quickly becomes the band's number one headbanger moment and then navigates through individual instrument breakdowns, multiple build-ups with respective pay-offs and its own majestic ending before the album's even had a chance to fully start. "Punainen komentaja" was the reluctant single and it is by far the most instant track on the record, the distinctive double-bass drum barrage of the verses paving way to the album's catchiest chorus; and if you want more proof of just how well-crafted this album is, it's in how the band turn "and he knows the secrets of the Rings of Schwarzschild" into a strong singalong melody. "Tähtilaivan kapteeni" stands out by way of its singular focus in its deep space melancholy, acting as the breather section of the album that gives you a second to reflect what's come before and brace for the next run of songs - it's most gracefully melodic song on the album, which otherwise isn't too fussed about that particular facet of the band's music.
Even in a discography full of strange ducks, Talvikuningas is still the most idiosyncratic. It's CMX at their most uncompromising, quite literally: it acts and sounds like a passion project created solely to cater its creators' whims with their full belief and love behind it, with its potential reception outside its creative bubble considered completely irrelevant. The actual reception split half-and-half, between those who got absorbed wholly into its world and found it a revelation and those who were left completely cold by the very same things others felt passionately drawn to. The truth is... that it's great but not among their best, as predictably middling of an opinion that is? It's a one-of-a-kind event that in its ethos I think any artist should strive for at least once in their lifetime - that pure creative, isolated and unfiltered freedom from any expectations, purely focused on realising the most ambitious ideas of its creator. It's also an impenetrable colossus that demands you to be receptive for it, lest it leaves you completely cold. It's not CMX's best written album in terms of the strength of its songs, but it also feels like that's judging it on the wrong scale because the point here isn't a handful of bangers in a row. It's the presentation of a singular hour-long piece, split into twelve distinct sections for sure but bound so tightly together that there's no point in splitting them. It's a hell of an epic thing and while it's not among my top tier of CMX, it's the one album of theirs that still leaves me in awe the most.
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