CD1 (Ilmari): 1) Tuulet ja myrskyt; 2) Uusi ihmiskunta (Videoversio); 3) Punainen komentaja; 4) Kivinen kirja; 5) En tahdo nähdä enää yhtään alastonta; 6) Sateenkaaren pää; 7) Kusimyrsky; 8) Rakkaudessa ja sodassa; 9) Laavaa; 10) Me tulemme kaikkialta; 11) Pedot; 12) Pretoriaanikyborgit; 13) Kappaleina
CD2 (Väinämö): 1) Niin me kaikki mennään; 2) Kain; 3) Iäti; 4) Linnunrata; 5) Tähtilaivan kapteeni; 6) Rikkisuudeltu; 7) Ojai; 8) Rautalankaa; 9) Teräs; 10) Kuolemaantuomitut; 11) Eteläisen tähtitaivaan kartoitus; 12) Laulu todellisuuden luonteesta; 13) Valoa nopeammat koneet
CD3 (Lemminki): 1) Hyökyaalto; 2) Magnetogorsk; 3) Suuri pyramidi; 4) Myrskynkosija; 5) Supersäie; 6) Kirotut; 7) Epätodennäköisyyslaskelma; 8) Vapaus johtaa kansaa (feat. Kotiteollisuus & 51 Koodia); 9) Mesokosmos; 10) Requiem 2012; 11) Vanhan liiton arkkiveisu; 12) Hullut koirat; 13) Mekaanisten lintujen puisto
More singles, album cuts and rare material, but a timespan full of mixed results is reflected here too.
Key tracks: Of the non-album material, "Kuolemaantuomitut", "Rautalankaa", "Mekaanisten lintujen puisto"
It's 2016. Digital formats now hold a stronger foothold than physical formats and streaming has started to take over as the primary method of music consumption for the general public. For those still holding out on physical music, CDs have been branded as the uncool choice and vinyl's baffling return to the mainstream is becoming a real thing. CMX, once a band who balanced unwavering commitment to their own whims with actual commercially successful hits, haven't had a truly popular single for a little over half a decade. The truth is, absolutely no average member of public is going to buy a 3-CD box set of singles, selected album material, b-sides and other extras - not the way they would with the first two Cloaca Maxima compilations and especially when you take into account how the timespan this third part includes one album with no singles, two with zero hits and only few songs they might actually recognise.
The fact that Cloaca Maxima III exists to begin with is like a fan wishlist prompt, a tradition that needs to be fulfilled now that the band have established this series of milestone marker collections - and maybe that's why in parts it feels like a release done out of obligation rather than desire. Let's face it, everyone is here for the third disc for its rare non-album cuts and those first two CDs dedicated to a reader's digest summary of the last 12 years - once again split between the louder rock songs and softer/subtler material per disc - are more perfunctory in nature. Which would go for some way to explain why a lot of this sounds so slapdash. The flow is abrupt and awkward throughout which is a stark contrast to the well-thought running order of the first two Cloaca Maximas, with "Kappaleina" closing off the first disc being a particularly egregious example that sounds like it was made through shuffle. The selections from the segued-together Talvikuningas haven't been edited with even the laziest of fade-outs and thus they end with a direct crash into a brick wall halfway through a note, which might then explain why only three songs from that record appear here even though it's one of the key albums out of the five featured here. The two new songs aren't that exciting either: the piano-accentuated "Tuulet ja myrskyt" is a perfectly pleasant anthem and "Niin me kaikki mennään" drills really heavily into the radio-friendly suomirock vibe the band had started to fall into in the recent years. Both are fine but stereotypical compilation filler, which CMX had previously avoided. Where the discs dedicated to the old and familiar on the first two CM compilations are still fun to listen as an experienced fan, the impact isn't quite the same here.
That said, the key takeaway from the first two discs are that they act as a convenient collection point for a number of non-album tracks CMX released in the timespan of the compilation, and this time it's actually pretty significant. "Kuolemaantuomitut" was released as a one-off single right before Talvikuningas and it's effortlessly beautiful, gracefully sincere and soaringly yearning: or to summarise it, it's pretty damn huge of an anthem that strikes very particular emotional chords. It's huge and far better than just a random loose single. "Kivinen kirja" and "Rautalankaa" were originally released on the earnest greatest hits compilation Kaikki hedelmät in 2008 and now included here for the benefit of every fan who skipped on that label-mandated release, and while I do like the straightforwardly loud "Kivinen kirja", it's "Rautalankaa" that really deserves the second time in the spotlight. What starts out as a typical CMX-rocker (complete with a pun title which Yrjänä loves, "rautalanka" being the coined term for the particular guitar sound used in the lead guitar riff), as soon as the strings hit it ascends to a whole new level of grandeur that's slightly reminiscent of the golden era classic "Puuvertaus" with its combination of orchestral flair and muscular guitars. The Pedot single "Uusi ihmiskunta" is also presented as its music video version with a guest verse from the Finnish rock legend Tuomari Nurmio, which to my knowledge hasn't been released earlier and while I prefer the feature-less original, having the alternative take in my library is welcomed.
The much-awaited third disc is... in retrospect kind of obviously a little bit of a letdown, in parts anyway. Both Seitsentahokas and Mesmeria were released after actual single releases had died in the industry and thus any leftover songs from those sessions remained unreleased officially until now. The first half of the 3rd CD is mostly dedicated to previously unheard material from those sessions (touched up after the fact where required) and with those two albums being two of the weakest CMX have released, the outtakes aren't particularly exciting. "Kirotut" and "Epätodennäköisyyslaskelma", two b-sides from the Pedot era are also rather throwaway in nature and in the liner notes Yrjänä admits as much between the lines. Things do get better halfway through, kicked off by the non-album collaboration single "Vapaus johtaa kansaa" with Kotiteollisuus and 51 Koodia - it's a whole lot of unhinged testosterone and masculine thrashing about, and it's a great deal of fun in its unashamed pop-metal flirtations. The incomprehensingly slobbering "Mesokosmos", the nihilist anthem "Requiem 2012" and "Vanhan liiton arkkiveisu" with its half-improv sing-speak verses are all Iäti b-sides but they were finished after the album and they've got a tangled-up weirdness to them that's reminiscent of CMX b-sides of yore. "Mekaanisten lintujen puisto" - "The Garden of Mechanical Birds" - at the end is the undeniable triumph of this collection: it starts out innocously enough if alluringly experimental, with a restless beat and an arrangement heavy on electric piano reminiscent of Radiohead when they were reconstructing their own essence at the turn of the millennium. Then the titular birds appear and the song falls into an abyss of nightmares for the next three minutes. It's maniac, creepy, almost genuinely distressing - and thoroughly brilliant.
The much-touted cover of pop superstar Antti Tuisku's "Hyökyaalto" should probably be acknowledged as well (recorded as an "exchange of pleasantries" after Tuisku covered CMX's "Pelasta maailma" in one of his albums), but in effect CMX just turn it into a very contemporary CMX single that probably could've been on Mesmeria and it becomes yet another example of a rock act covering a pop song that only highlights how the two worlds aren't as far apart as some people might like to think. It's fine and more of a curious footnote than you'd expect; still, more interesting than the Popeda cover "Hullut koirat" that comes and goes without leaving an impression. CMX don't really do covers and maybe these two prove a point why that's the case.
I guess the slightly lukewarm positivity is to be expected though. The first two Cloaca Maxima compilations felt like natural spots for the band to park on and reflect the prior years, with the covered albums forming clear chapters in the band's history. Here we have one album that could just as easily have been included in Cloaca Maxima II and it would've made perhaps even more sense, another that was a bizarre experimental rock opera that stands as its own weird monolith in the band's story and a set of three records that are loosely combined by the notion of CMX's grip on quality control beginning to loosen. It's all much more of a hodgepodge to make any sense out of together and the diversity in both sound and quality is spread wide. At the end of the day it's a good collection, because combining (some of) the best bits of those five records together and adding some (some) interesting rarities in the mix can't really fail as a recipe. It's just not as captivating as the last two.
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