Radiopuhelimet ‎– Viisi Tähteä CD

Radiopuhelimet ‎– Viisi Tähteä CD

"Many times you come across bands that you haven’t been able to hear, but still their music has already formed a certain image. This image, the idea, may consist of snippets of information, an image of the band, and some single song that has been heard sometime long ago in really dim conditions. For me, such a band was Radiopuhelimet.

Even though somewhere in the back of my backbone had already formed some sort of awareness of the band, it managed to surprise me completely. The band's new album Five Stars is a perfect diamond. It’s also the kind of record where it seems pointless to elevate individual songs above others, but in this case, they only serve as evidence to support the canonization of the work.

The album starts with the crackling rock Home! In the spirit of Badding, after which they are rushed into the five-star hotel very properly. The album's title track sets the standard high - professionalism, energy and tireless zeal. The slower material on the record is represented by punkblues cosmos accelerating and at once a magnificent anonymous day. The intensity does not decrease during the record at all, as the mid-song songs Frontiers, Endless Summer and Kamennogorsk? manage to be very imaginative rallies within their strict genre boundaries.

In addition to guitarist Mällinen's imaginative riffs and insightful compositions, the whole band is welded extremely tightly. Raatikainen's drums, Annunen's bass and Katz's composite guitar lower the carpet, on which the furniture and utensils - riffs and vocals are piled up. Soloist J. A. Mäki's originally phrased song also works in its own right: compared to the ever-tired Pelle Million, Mäki is no clown and although Mäki's lyrics burst with humor, they do not oppress inferiority à la Freud, Marx, Engels & Jung. Some of Mäki’s words sum up something essential about the album and the band itself, as in the song Black Sheet: “There’s room for the ego and carcass to fit in the same picture, this is the attitude and the real threat”.

The band's insatiable energy exudes from the cracks in the stereo of the record. Radios are fierce and crackling, without being unprofessional. Tight and striking grooves and tight riffs separate the Radios from the chaff. In particular, the second to last song, The Star and the Pirate, which is so striking in funk rock, that upon hearing it, the listener is empowered by a slowly advancing pacifier and trance that seals faith in the perfection of the record. The Motor Ass, chosen to end the album, seems pointless at first, but when it turns out to be a 30-second manifesto, then that too deserves its place. What could be wrong with this record?

I was already mentally prepared to cancel the name of the album, noting that the name was not completely surprised to read, but I still had to humble myself in front of the album myself and modify my sentence: Five stars get five stars." - Otto Kylmälä