CMX is a Finnish prog/art rock band and they have done pretty much everything: hardcore punk, alternative, prog, metal, pop, folk rock, industrial... They have played a few shows outside of Finland, but barely anyone knows them abroad, although they're a cult band here and have been awarded a dozen gold records and a few platinum records. However, A.W. Yrjänä's cryptic lyrics are a pretty big part of their music, so I guess it may be difficult to get into them if you don't understand Finnish.
The most acclaimed CMX album is Aura from 1994, and it includes their greatest hit,
Ruoste (Rust), which is an acoustic ballad with strings that continues to get radio airplay to this day in Finland.
Faith No More bassist Billy Gould produced their seventh album Vainajala in 1998, here's a song from it:
Ei yksikään (No One) (reportedly the song got the nickname Hey Mexican from the way Gould tried to pronounce the title
)
Aion from 2003 is a thematic album about evil, and it's got some pretty experimental stuff on it, such as the backmasked guitars on
Melankolia (Melancholy).
In 2007 CMX released a sci-fi concept album called Talvikuningas (The Winter King), which is probably the closest they ever got to prog metal - there are heavy Tool and Rush influences on that record. They made a cool animated video clip for
Punainen komentaja (The Red Commander).
The latest album Mesmeria came out earlier this year, here's the lead single
Rakkaudessa ja sodassa (In Love and War). I'll write a review for that record next week and update this post with it. EDIT:
Here it is!Sorry if I overwhelmed you guys with all those links, but it's hard to sum up their sound with just one or two songs! Almost all of their discography is on Spotify, so you can check out more of their songs there.