Children Of Bodom

Fucking sweet!!! YES, YES, YES, new Bodom. My Spirit Dragon that challenges time has already burst forth at the mere thought of it. COB are so good, so hard, and so fast. Their music is so radically metal beyond metal that normal metal ceases to exist on the periodic table of awesomeness. Metal warriors take note: your spirit dragon will not be born of the star of enormous excellence nor bask in the glorious nebula of rockage if you skip out on Bodom. It will be born of a less equal celestial event and may not even achieve intergalactic flight. Be warned!

Are you dead yet?!?! Hahaha… no! But you should be. If you’ve been listening to COB at all you will know that their music is a genius achieved by few bands. Listening to it may well affect your subconscious brain and what was once you will be lost forever only to be replaced by something wiser in the ways of metal. Forever shall you reign from a higher plane when Bodom be thy name.

“…by the tingling of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” – Shakespeare

Wicked it be. This album pounds life back a pace and tells it not to suck. The music is so challenging. The opening song “Living Dead Beat” is an amazing opening song. The keyboards come in right away to remind me that COB is like no other. The guitars begin to pound, the drums rumble forward, and wherever you were before you started playing this song, you have gone somewhere else. You instantly imagine yourself playing this music, rocking to it at concert, or battling an overwhelming force of ninjas to it. The lyrics kick in and you’re gone. Bodom has you! At about the 3:30 mark they pull a riff that breaks time and life on the planet and stops ageing for the duration of the following solo. At 5:17, it’s hard to believe that this is the longest song on the album. By the time it’s done you can’t believe it’s over. This last sentence can easily be carried on to every song on this entire album.

Yet again I will not and cannot go through each COB song and review. It would make this review a book, and one I’m not prepared to write. You can’t describe what happens in a Bodom song. To do so would feel like I had killed something amazing by picking apart the details until I had killed the original beauty. Bodom needs to be enjoyed in its wholeness. The many parts that show up in a COB song are so perfectly woven that to unweave would leave only tangled string instead of something beautiful. The songs bust out one by one, each one amazing, each one achieving. This album gets better and better and better. My advice is to listen repeatedly until your eyes turn to flame. It can take a while to break into a Bodom record. The music is complex, and that is where the massive appreciation I have for this band lies.

Like many albums you listen to for a while, the songs grip you, then after a while they just don’t take you in the same way. They get old, and what was once a massive source of energy and joy has faded and passed on. It’s still good music, but it ceases to call forth the dragon. The music is no longer battle ready. But a COB record is the exact opposite. Each time it only gets better. Each time you discover something new, and instead of the songs getting less energizing they become more and more empowering with each listen. This album is not better or worse then any previous COB record. I believe they have been holding to a state of pure excellence. Was any one Mozart song better than another? How does one compare creation to creation? If that last sentence doesn’t have you intrigued enough to listen, then you should just leave now, your life is wrote.

Yet again I have tried to wrap language around something that I find hard to describe. I have such massive respect and appreciation for this band and its music. I hope I did it some justice and if not, I gave it my honest try. Lastly….

Notable songs: All of them. I MEAN it!
Suggestion: Get it or ninjas will not appear.
Mission: To be able to channel the power provided by COB into physical events of awesomeness.  [ END ]

Track Listing:

01. Living Dead Beat
02. Are You Dead Yet?
03. If You Want Peace… Prepare For War
04. Punch Me I Bleed
05. In Your Face
06. Next In Line
07. Bastards of Bodom
08. Trashed, Lost & Strungout
09. We’re Not Gonna Fall

Run Time: 37:21