on 2011-12-16 vuohipukki Said:

You can find the whole English translation of this awesome album here:

http://www.cmx.fi/en/reader.php?file=talvikuningas_english
Not Rated

Review:

on 2011-03-25 CharlesMartel Said:

I used to frequent a different music website - one which had album charts by year. In late 2007, while perusing the list of best albums of that year, I noticed this album appeared at number 2. Never having heard of CMX or Cloaca Maxima, their alter ego, I downloaded some tracks to check out. Impressed, I added it to my wishlist but only managed to obtain the album some months later in early 2008.

Shortly after I had first noticed it, there then began one of the most shameful examples of fanboyism/street teaming I have yet seen on what tried to portray itself as a serious music site. Fans of Radiohead, determined to make "In Rainbows" the top album for the year, systematically began to rate this as low as possible in an attempt to drive it down. This sparked a flurry of non-listeners sticking their oar in, both to drive it down or to compensate for the activities of the fanboys. The whole episode was distasteful and appalling. Above all, it detracted from the music, which is surely what we are all supposed to be about. Irrespective of the outcome, I for one would rather see as much diversity in musical appreciation as possible - I can think of nothing worse than seeing albums put out by one artist become the be all and end all for music that year.

From being pretty much unheard of outside Finland, "Talvikuningas" suddenly gained a lot of attention. On the premise that no publicity is bad publicity, the episode probably prompted more people to listen to this album, or at least pay it some attention, than otherwise would have been the case and if anything good came out of this shoddy behaviour, that is probably it. But what of the music? As one who heard it before the furore, I would rather concentrate on that.

And music is really what I have to go on. The title, I believe, means "Winter King", and the album is a concept album about a brutal and warlike king in the year 2727 and is based on a fictional work being written by A. W. Yrjana, the band's bassist and vocalist. As many reviewers have suggested, if you don't understand Finnish, your appreciation of this album may be limited. Well, I don't understand Finnish, but I maintain that good music will get its message across, regardless of lyrics. So I will attempt to do this justice on the basis of the imagery the music creates in my mind (together with what I think the song titles mean).

OK, judging by the CD insert, the "Winter King" is called Wong Wu-Wei, which would strongly suggest a Chinese connection. The name could mean King of Powerful Witches in Mandarin (or cuddle a yellow centipede depending on how you pronounce it), but we'll leave the interpretation open. Further confusion comes when you realise that the order of the songs is not chronological, so I shall untangle it and try to piece together the story as far as is possible. This task is not made easy by the fact that all the tracks run into each other. It therefore requires some careful listening to distinguish where one track ends and the next begins.

I would venture, judging by the dates, that the story begins with the second track, "Resurssikysymys", which briefly sets the stage upon which the story is based. This short track has the feel of orders being barked, military commands being issued to the troops perhaps. The pace of the music in track seven, "Parvatin Tietaja", conveys tension, almost panic: time is running out. A prophetic theme, a cosmological portent if you like, can be detected in track 6, "Kosmologisen Vakion Laulu", a prophecy of impending destruction perhaps.

From here we proceed to the adversaries. The third track, "Pretoriaanikyborgit", which I will assume means Praetorian Cyborg, introduces the brutal and unfeeling warriors who conduct the Winter King's campaigns. The music is at its most ponderous here, although it is interspersed with some reflective, almost spacey moments. To identify the adversaries of the cyborgs, you have to look to the fifth track of the album, "Tahtilaivan Kapteeni". This is less brutal but contains more than a hint of pessimism and futility and I guess that the kapteeni is/are captain(s), perhaps of the armies of the opponents of the Winter King.

The rest of the album comes across as a sort of LOTR-style battle. The calm before the coming storm can be felt in track 10, "Quanta", while the battle itself is joined in track 4, "Vallan Haamut", with its fast and furious pace. The inevitability of defeat is expressed through track 9, "Langennut Valo", where defeat turns into a rout by the end of the track. The escape of the survivors comes across through track 8, "Punainen Komentaja". Track 11, "Rusalkai" may be a name, but what I hear in this is the establishment of a new order, a more repressive authority as the power of the Winter King grows.

The two remaining tracks, the first and the last on the album, seem to bracket the rest and share a similar musical quality. Because of the similarity in the titles I resorted to checking an online Finnish-English dictionary to find that "Kaikkivaltias" means almighty and "peili" means mirror. So it seems logical to me that the album brackets with the all powerful on the one hand, and his opposite on the other: good and evil; God and Satan; the Winter King and his eventual nemesis.

How close this is to the reality of the story on the album I don't know. If anyone who speaks Finnish cares to tell me later how close I have come that would indeed be interesting. Its influences are clear - this is progressive rock with a dose of metal. The musical structures and chords are very reminiscent of early Rush (2727 = 2112?). But I think a careful listening of the album does sustain the earlier point I made. You can make sense of an album, even if you cannot understand the lyrics, purely on the quality of the music. Now not every band will be able to achieve this. That CMX do is a credit to them, and is the reason why this album is worth listening to.
Rating: 8/10