A dose of extreme metal with Children of Bodom

Behold Alexi Laiho as his fingers set fire to his ESP Flying V Scythe. 

 

Inheritor of the virtuoso spirit, arguably the Randy Rhoads of modern heavy music and the missing link between Eddie Van Halen and extreme metal, Laiho isn’t just a guitar wizard. To top it off he also sings, and screams, and mimics a pretty good Cookie Monster growl. 

 

The frontman of Children of Bodom (COB) has been named “Best Metal Guitarist” by Guitar World and COB itself has been dubbed "technically dazzling" by the New York Times. Laiho’s nickname is “The Wild Child,” and tonight I get to see why, as he thrashes out scorching riffs within my spitting distance. 

 

It’s a humid November 19 at the Amoranto Theater and I’m wearing the black shirt and torn shorts uniform like the other couple of hundred metalheads in attendance. Pulp Live and JBMusic Productions has brought the Finnish metal band to Manila for a one night only gig as part of the Asian leg of their Ugly World Tour, so here I am risking whiplash with the next generation of pimply headbangers.   

 

Formed in 1993 in Espoo, Finland, COB has been variously dubbed as Tuonela metal (the Finnish press) and extreme metal (Laiho himself)–both vague terms that encompass their inclination for fusing elements of various heavy genres like progressive, black metal, thrash, melodic, and death metal. But wherever you pigeonhole them in, COB remains to be one of Finland's best-selling artists of all time, at six full-length LPs recorded and released, and with more than 250,000 units sold in their native country alone.

 

The current line up of COB is Laiho on lead vocals and lead guitar, original drummer Jaska Raatikainen, Henkka Seppälä on bass, Janne Wirman on keyboards and synthesizers, and Roope Latvala as a fairly recent addition (2003) on rhythm guitar duties. 

 

In heavy metal, virtuosic talents like Laiho are the self-taught wunderkinds who push the envelope of possibility without much benefit of institutional training, just the forge of discipline and practice, practice, practice. Through it, he has far outstripped what would in days of yore simply be out of his reach and enabled Children of Bodom to grace the Wacken Festival (the Carnegie Hall of heavy metal) and other big events like Ozzfest. All that add up to popular cult status worldwide. 

 

Still, what sets Laiho apart from the slew of guitar heroes isn’t just the ability to shred an axe to smithereens and endorse products with aplomb (from signature strings to signature guitar model), but to wrestle all that talent into catchy songcraft and flavor it with genre sensibilities. Hence, the Satanic pomp and punk spree simmered in occult drama that is COB’s signature sound. 

 

Children of Bodom take their moniker from Lake Bodom, a body of water in Espoo, virtually a Finnish province about 22 kilometers west of the capital city Helsinki, where an infamous multiple homicide took place in 1960. Four teenagers were camping on the shores when, at around 4 a.m., someone viciously murdered three of them with a knife and a blunt instrument. The fourth camper was wounded severely but survived.  

The Lake Bodom Murders remain unsolved and the culprit unidentified to this day. Such an event marked by savagery and slaughter aptly powers the music of COB. My favorites off the COB discography are “Hate Crew Deathroll” (2003) and “Blooddrunk” (2008). The band did not disappoint that night as they trotted out tracks even from very early albums. 

 

Technically superb

 

Local progressive metal band Eternal Now, albeit beset by technical difficulties early on (the singer was unaware his mic refused to work for the opening song), warmed up the crowd as much as they could. Though it wasn’t much of a packed crowd the VIP section’s mosh pit was decent and more than enough to make it an enjoyable hour and a half when COB finally came on. 

 

My favorites off the live set were “Bodom After Midnight,” a perfect horns up anthem that has hooks aplenty, and “Blooddrunk,” typical of the whiplash inducing songs that allude to the grotesque and the bad things that go bump in the chilling Scandinavian night.

 

The best thing about watching COB live is seeing how technically superb musicians interact with each other in a non-studio situation. To wit, the keyboards by Janne Wirman guaranteed a perfect ambient foil to the fiery guitar work of Laiho and Latvala. It’s terrific how Wirman is just as mind numbingly fast as the axe players. Then there’s the inhuman strength and dexterity of Raatikainen on his mammoth drum set. Multiply the Muppet’s Animal by 100 and you’ll probably get a fair approximation of how someone can sound like a flawless machine. 

 

The Wild Child and Co. made us sweat and imagine the Finnish nightmares conjured up in their songs. I go to these concerts to renew my conduit to the primal and to remind myself that, often, rock stars are the best kind of shamans. For an hour and a half I laid down on the shore of Lake Bodom and dreamt of such songs that would play counterpoint to ceremony and murder.

 

The theater shook to our stomping feet and to the energy of a virtuoso at the peak of his powers with a band that not only kept up but heightened the music into something monstrous, sinister and beautiful. Following Laiho’s command, I held on to the barricade and banged my head for dear life. –KG, GMA News

 

All photos from Pulp Live World Productions