b o b

There's not a lot I can add to Brandon's review (below). As he said, if you really liked the band's first album and are looking for more of the same, then buying this disc is a safe bet. It has the same ethnic influences, the same insanely impressive musicianship, and a mix of wildly upbeat music, slower, darker pieces and bits that fall in between. Personally, I kind of wish the second album was a little more different from the first. This is a very good CD, but it's really just "more of the same". If I put this disc and the first album in a multi-disc CD player and hit the random button, there's no way I'd be able to tell which album the resulting music came from. review by Bob Eichler — 3-25-05 —

b r a n d o n

This one's easy: if you liked Vasaraasia, you'll like Käärmelautakunta. The overall method hasn't changed from the debut album to this, the sophomore effort - the music here is a melting pot of "ethnic" melodies played on mostly non-rock instrumentation (as before, cellos, trumpets, and saxes tend to dominate, with lots of pump organ in the background) in a rock context. But where Vasaraasia tended to flit between fast, jittery, up-tempo pieces and extremely dark and brooding ones, this one generally occupies a middle ground more often. Much of the album is still distinctly moody, with few tracks that are as upbeat as, say, "Mamelukki and Musta Leski" from the debut, but they don't tend to get as droney or depressing as some of the pieces from the earlier album. The last two tracks break away from this sort of mid-tempo, mid-mood theme, with "Lentävä Mato" being the most upbeat and energetic piece on the album and "Jää, Hyvä Mieli" the hardest-rocking. The latter especially is quite a departure, consisting almost entirely of an extremely slow, inexorably plodding heavy-metal riff (on cello, of course) overlaid by meandering pump organ and sax. Doom metal meets Eastern European folk: it's quite an experience... and it works. Aside from the above, it's tough to describe this album either in terms of its predecessor or on absolute terms. The moniker "ethnic brass punk" that the band trumpets on their website still seems to hold, but Käärmelautakunta doesn't seem quite as fresh in that sense as the debut, probably simply because it's really more of the same. In this case, though, I'm not complaining — this is really great, top-notch stuff, and though it doesn't break new ground as compared to Vasaraasia, I think it's more consistenly enjoyable as a whole, and it has become my favorite of two albums. And where else do you get to hear a dual-cello attack that really rocks? review by Brandon Wu — 4-11-03 —