{"id":5746,"date":"2012-05-22T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T00:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=5746"},"modified":"2012-06-10T00:47:49","modified_gmt":"2012-06-10T00:47:49","slug":"feature-children-of-bodom-05-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-children-of-bodom-05-12\/","title":{"rendered":"CHILDREN OF BODOM – Shipping Up To Espoo (May 2012) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHILDREN OF BODOM – Shipping Up To Espoo<\/strong><\/span>
\nAnthony Morgan<\/span>
\nMay 2012<\/span><\/p>\n

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Children Of Bodom (l-r): Janne Wirman, Roope Latvala, Jaska Raatikainen,
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Espoo, Finland-based extreme metal outfit Children Of Bodom formed in 1993 under the moniker Inearthed, guitarist Alexi Laiho and drummer Jaska Raatikainen roughly 13-14 years old at the time. Alexi had played guitar for roughly two years while Jaska had just begun to play drums, and so the two began jamming. The pair attended the same class as well as the same school, initially performing cover interpretations. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried searching for other guys who actually knew how to play,\u201d Alexi supplements. \u201cThen we started writing our own songs. We made our first demo tape in 1994, and then after that the bass player joined in 1995 we just kept recording a lot of demo tapes, and sending those out for record labels and stuff. We always got rejected up until 1997, which by that time we already had our current line-up except for the guitar player. It was basically just a lot of rehearsing. I remember we were basically rehearsing hours and hours every single day, all of us. We just had the passion and the drive to get out there. We just basically wanted to play shows, and wanted to make an album. We didn\u2019t really give a fuck whether we were gonna sell a 100 copies or a 1,000 copies, but then all of a sudden the first album ended up selling like 40-50,000 within the first year. It was definitely pretty amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finland\u2019s mid-90s metal scene was mostly an underground affair. \u201cThe metal scene was mostly just underground black metal, death metal, just really an extreme metal kind of scene,\u201d the guitarist concurs. \u201cEspecially at that time, the metal scene was kind of dead. In the early to mid-90s, metal was pretty much dead as far as the mainstream goes. Nobody really wanted to admit that they were into metal. It was all about grunge and all that alternative stuff and what not, so we were part of that underground scene for a long time. It was kind of like that up until the late 90s when things started to pick up, and we could actually see there were other bands out there kind of struggling as well. We got to tour with bands like Hypocrisy, Dismember, and In Flames, and I think that we were part of building extreme metal up again. It seems that extreme metal came back to the point where it was in the early, early 90s before it kind of died.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inearthed revised its moniker to Children Of Bodom during 1997. \u201cWe kind of had to do that, but we had a good reason too,\u201d Alexi notes. \u201cThis was one of the labels we sent out our third demo to, and they were the only ones who picked us up. They gave us a complete rip-off deal though, which was the kind of deal where we would have to pay for everything, buy a 1,000 copies of our own album, sell them ourselves, and then get 10% of royalties out of that. To me it sounded like bullshit, and there was no promotion or what not either. We figured that that was all we were gonna get though, so we just did that. We then kind of saved up a little money, and went to the studio. After that, once Something Wild<\/em> was recorded it ended up in the hands of a guy who used to work for Spinefarm. He called me up, and just told me \u2018Look, you should definitely come to Spinefarm.\u2019 That\u2019s what we wanted to do, and we figured that it was a fair deal. We were gonna kill the band, and change our name. That\u2019s what we did, and there was the album. That was it in a nutshell, to cut a long story short.\u201d<\/p>\n

Debut studio full-length Something Wild<\/em> arrived in November 1997. \u201cIt\u2019s aggressive and energetic, but also it\u2019s juvenile,\u201d the mainman critiques. \u201cYou can hear that we were young and we were just eager to get out there, but that\u2019s the thing I kind of like about it too. Technically it might not be the best album ever but it\u2019s definitely genuine, and you can hear that these guys are serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophomore outing Hatebreeder<\/em> came in April 1999. \u201cIt was an improvement as far as songwriting, and just personal skills,\u201d Alexi enthuses. \u201cPlaying wise you can totally hear that within less than two years, everybody had improved so much. Also production wise, I don\u2019t know if it was a good thing but Hatebreeder<\/em> to me sounds too computerised. It\u2019s a matter of taste, but definitely it was an improvement in every way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Third studio record Follow The Reaper<\/em> marked Children Of Bodom\u2019s first proper release of the 2000s, surfacing in October 2000 to be precise. \u201cBy the time we went to the studio for Follow The Reaper<\/em>, so much stuff had already happened,\u201d the vocalist remembers. \u201cFor Hatebreeder<\/em> we had done a full European tour. Just basically so many shows we played; we went to Japan, blah blah. We basically became an established band in the metal scene at the time. Of course Follow The Reaper<\/em> was just one of the albums where we actually had to think about what we were gonna do for the first time, and not rush into the studio and just fuck around. We were forced to take more time to write songs, because all that touring obviously took a lot of time. Also, it had a different sound. Follow The Reaper<\/em> was recorded in Sweden, which was a new thing for us. We did it with Peter T\u00e4gtgren (Hypocrisy \/ Pain). From my point of view, I think Follow The Reaper<\/em> was kind of like a culmination of the first two albums with a lot of new stuff added to it. It\u2019s hard to explain, but it\u2019s just from my point of view anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

September 2003 heralded fourth platter Hate Crew Deathroll<\/em>. \u201cI think that was the album which really had the sound of Children Of Bodom for the first time,\u201d Alexi exalts. \u201cIt sounds like we knew what we were doing, and song wise in general it\u2019s really strong. Also, it seemed to be the album that broke us through. During that album, we also started concentrating on the American market as well which was a whole new world for us. The album actually gave us a chance to do something like that though, which obviously was a good thing. Hate Crew Deathroll<\/em> is definitely one of my favourite Children Of Bodom albums.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hate Crew Deathroll<\/em> was the last Children Of Bodom album to feature guitarist Alexander Kuoppala. \u201cIt was a weird case in every way,\u201d the frontman muses. \u201cHe was there since 1995; he was so dedicated as a musician, and was a crazy metalhead. All of a sudden, he basically met some chick just overnight. He decided that he wanted to become a family man, quit the band, and just leave all his friends. I looked at him, and said \u2018You\u2019re not the first one to play rock \u2019n\u2019 roll who has a kid, so what\u2019s your fucking problem?\u2019 He said \u2018I just don\u2019t wanna do this anymore,\u2019 and then the guy just disappeared. It was strange, but I guess shit like that happens. It definitely sucked, but you can\u2019t really stop and cry about it too much. You\u2019ve just gotta move on, which we did. We found Roope (Latvala) to play guitar, and he\u2019s a bit better guitar player anyway. At the end of the day, it was a good deal for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexi had performed alongside Roope Latvala (Stone \/ ex-Waltari) in the power metal group Sinergy, both featuring on the Nuclear Blast-released albums To Hell And Back<\/em> (August 2000) and Suicide By My Side<\/em> (February 2002). \u201cI had played with him for a couple of years already, like you said,\u201d he acknowledges. \u201cEverybody knew him already, so we knew that he would be cool and would get along with everybody. As a guitar player he\u2019s fucking amazing, he really is. He happened to be there at the moment when Alexander told us that he was gonna bail. We didn\u2019t really know what to do and we had all these shows coming up, important tours and what not. It just seemed that we didn\u2019t really have time to train or find somebody new, but then Roope kind of offered to do the rest of the shows for the rest of the year. We were like \u2018Yeah, okay. That\u2019s cool.\u2019 He just kind of stuck around and before we knew it, he\u2019d been around forever. After a year of touring, you sure as hell really get to know somebody and whether they\u2019re a person you can actually live with or not (laughs). He turned out to be a dude that everybody gets along with.\u201d<\/p>\n

September 2005\u2019s Are You Dead Yet?<\/em> was the first Children Of Bodom full-length to feature Roope\u2019s guitar work. \u201cSongwriting wise, it wasn\u2019t really different from any of the previous ones,\u201d the singer tenders. \u201cRoope was really involved, and hard working. He was really involved in the arrangements as well, but at first I guess he was a little bit shy because it was only us four at that point. We were so tight since we had known each other since we were kids, so I guess he felt a little out of place at first. He didn\u2019t seem to care about it though, because he did a great job. It didn\u2019t feel any different; it just felt like we were just playing good music with good friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Children Of Bodom (l-r): Roope Latvala, Janne Wirman, Alexi Laiho, Jaska
Raatikainen and Henkka Sepp\u00e4l\u00e4<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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Sixth studio record Blooddrunk<\/em> saw the light of day in April 2008. \u201cAgain, there was a lot of touring for that album,\u201d Alexi reiterates. \u201cWe were on the road for almost two years, and pretty much the songwriting and what not never changed really that much. Once we get off the road we take one month off, and then I start writing some stuff. The other guys then get involved. Basically I just come up with a riff or something like that, and then we go to the practice pad. We\u2019ll then start jamming on it. That\u2019s how the songs start, but by the time we started recording Blooddrunk<\/em> the whole thing had grown a lot since Follow The Reaper<\/em> or even the Hate Crew Deathroll<\/em> album, and in a good way. Also, we just decided to do something different. For Blooddrunk<\/em> Peter T\u00e4gtgren recorded my vocals and produced them. We wanted to try new stuff, and I think it turned out really good. It turned out really brutal; I would definitely say it\u2019s the most brutal album we ever put out.\u201d<\/p>\n

March 2011 signalled the issue of seventh studio effort Relentless Reckless Forever<\/em>. \u201cIt was kind of the same thing,\u201d the axeman repeats. \u201cAgain, a lot of touring for Blooddrunk<\/em>, more than we had ever done before. I think it even got to the point where I wouldn\u2019t say it was too much, but it was definitely relentless. I would just put it that way (laughs). We didn\u2019t have that many breaks, and we just got a little exhausted from all the touring. I think that\u2019s probably the first time I\u2019ve ever felt it. When I came back home from almost two years of touring, I was kind of burnt out. I couldn\u2019t do shit for a month. I really couldn\u2019t do anything \u2013 I needed a rest. Of course we were like ten years older and ten years more experienced too, so we knew we needed to take time off and we knew what to do with it too. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a natural thing for us to take a little bit more time for songwriting, and not basically just kill ourselves with that and the recording process. I think that was a good thing because the songwriting was stronger than it was on Blooddrunk<\/em>, that\u2019s for sure. Blooddrunk<\/em> is definitely more brutal and raw, and dirty and dark. Relentless is sharper, tighter, and more in-your-face. I don\u2019t know… It\u2019s kind of angrier, but then again it\u2019s kind of hard for me to try to analyse our music. I\u2019ll just leave that up to everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

May 2012 compilation album Holiday At Lake Bodom (15 Years Of Wasted Youth)<\/em> marks 15 years since the issue of debut album Something Wild<\/em> and collects select tracks from Children Of Bodom\u2019s first seven studio records. \u201cIt was time to do something like that,\u201d Alexi reckons. \u201cI think 15 years for us was sort of a milestone, which also included seven studio albums. We figured that there were people who became fans of us when we released the first two albums \u2013 Something Wild<\/em> and Hatebreeder<\/em> \u2013 and then there are a lot of people who actually became Children of Bodom fans just recently. We all thought it was a good idea to put out an album that shows the whole career of Children Of Bodom from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

One might describe Holiday At Lake Bodom<\/em> as a \u2019best of\u2019 affair, though Children Of Bodom\u2019s co-founder wouldn\u2019t. \u201cI don\u2019t want to call it that,\u201d he stresses. \u201cIt basically just shows what we\u2019ve done for the past 15 years. We\u2019re a metal band, so to call it The Best Of or The Greatest Hits or whatever sounds wrong. That\u2019s why we figured it was better to give it an original title.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Holiday At Lake Bodom<\/em>\u2019s track selection was collectively decided by each of the outfit\u2019s members. \u201cIt took awhile because there are so many songs, and it was hard to decide which ones we wanted to put on there,\u201d Alexi laments. \u201cWe used the same method we use when we wanna come up with a live setlist, but through the years we\u2019ve noticed which songs people like best when we play live. That\u2019s how we came up with the track listing for the album. It\u2019s one disc. There\u2019s another disc which is a DVD, but that\u2019s basically just us fucking around for 30 minutes and that\u2019s it. The DVD doesn\u2019t go all the way back to 1997.\u201d<\/p>\n

The compilation includes a music video filmed for Relentless Reckless Forever number \u2018Shovel Knockout\u2019, the video previously unreleased. \u201cNobody really wanted to put it out because it\u2019s apparently too graphic, which I do not agree with,\u201d the guitarist complains. \u201cThe music video for \u2018Shovel Knockout\u2019 is supposed to be a day in the life of Children Of Bodom on the road. It shows us coming off stage, getting fucked up, waking up the next day, and then going onstage again. There\u2019s just drinking and partying going, so there\u2019s nothing illegal going on. There\u2019s no violence or anything, as far as I remember (laughs). There\u2019s alcohol in it, but that\u2019s legal, right? Originally we wanted to put that video on our website, because we knew that nobody wanted to play it anyway. It never ended up on there though, so finally we can release it. I think it\u2019s funny as hell, and I think that people who appreciate Children Of Bodom will definitely appreciate that video too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holiday At Lake Bodom<\/em> sports two freshly recorded cover versions, one which happens to be a rendition of \u2018I\u2019m Shipping Up To Boston\u2019. Originally by Celtic punk assortment Dropkick Murphys, Dropkick Murphys\u2019 version is included on June 2005 album The Warrior\u2019s Code<\/em>. \u201cWe just kind of hit the wall with what we were gonna do a cover song of, because we had basically done everything from Slayer<\/a> (\u2018Silent Scream\u2019, from July 1988\u2019s South Of Heaven<\/em>) to Britney Spears (\u2018Oops!… I Did It Again\u2019 from the May 2000 album of the same name),\u201d Alexi confesses. \u201cWe wanted to keep the surprise element, but it was kind of hard by that point. The whole band are basically fans of Dropkick Murphys anyway, because the song has just been around. I think Janne or someone else said we should do that. I said \u2018\u2018I\u2019m Shipping Up To Boston\u2019. What\u2019s that?\u2019 He said \u2018It\u2019s the one from The Departed<\/em> (2006) soundtrack.\u2019 So yeah, that\u2019s why I remember that one. It was a subconscious thing. It\u2019s a good movie too. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a challenge to cover and it was fun, that\u2019s for sure. It was definitely a joke. We make these stupid ass mix CDs \u2013 party CDs \u2013 for the tour bus and that song had been on three of them, so it got in our fucking heads. We were like \u2018You know what? Fuck it. Let\u2019s just cover that thing and get it over with.\u2019 The only thing is that I couldn\u2019t sing it, because vocally it\u2019s impossible for someone like me. I\u2019m a guitar player, not a singer. We had somebody else to do the clean vocals, a singer who has sung a lot of stuff for Warmen \u2013 our keyboard player\u2019s solo project. A good singer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Children Of Bodom found \u2018I\u2019m Shipping Up To Boston\u2019 easier to cover than Holiday At Lake Bodom<\/em>\u2019s second cover tune. \u201cIt\u2019s just closer to the music that we play,\u201d the mainman feels. \u201cThey\u2019re punk rock and kind of like Irish folk stuff or whatever, so for it was just easier to do that. Basically we dressed it up in metal, and just made it a bit heavier. The funny thing is that we were used to the same kinds of elements musically; it doesn\u2019t sound that obvious, but there\u2019s certain melodies and a certain rawness to the music that they do. I actually never knew about the band till like five years ago; I knew of them, but I wasn\u2019t into them. I guess it was a natural thing for us to cover them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pop-rock vocalist Rick Springfield\u2019s Billboard Hot 100 number one single \u2018Jessie\u2019s Girl\u2019 (originally featured on the February 1981 album Working Class Dog<\/em>) was the second composition to be covered for the compilation. \u201cIt was just one of those party songs that we\u2019d been listening to for years on the tour bus, and it was sort of the same thing that we did with Britney Spears,\u201d Alexi surmises. \u201cIt was one of those drunken ideas. We kept talking about it, and it got built up to the point that we just had to do it. Production wise it was a lot more challenging to cover than \u2018I\u2019m Shipping Up To Boston\u2019 like I said, and the vocals were obviously. It was surprisingly hard for us to do anything with it, to make a metal version of that. I know that it was supposed to sound silly and kind of funny, but we still wanna make it professional. That\u2019s why there was definitely more effort from us to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

An eighth Children Of Bodom studio full-length awaits in the pipeline. \u201cWe\u2019re having a break right now, so I\u2019m gonna start writing some stuff,\u201d the vocalist reveals. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna do festivals throughout the whole summer, and by the end of June we\u2019re gonna start writing new stuff. We should be in the studio sometime during this year. It\u2019s gonna be metal, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holiday At Lake Bodom (15 Years Of Wasted Youth)<\/em> was released in the United Kingdom on May 21st, 2012 and in North America on May 22nd, all via Spinefarm Records.<\/p>\n

Interview published in May 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHILDREN OF BODOM – Shipping Up To Espoo Anthony Morgan May 2012 Children Of Bodom (l-r): Janne Wirman, Roope Latvala, Jaska Raatikainen, Alexi Laiho and Henkka Sepp\u00e4l\u00e4 Espoo, Finland-based extreme metal outfit Children Of Bodom formed in 1993 under the moniker Inearthed, guitarist Alexi Laiho and drummer Jaska Raatikainen roughly 13-14 years old at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[286,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children-of-bodom","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5746"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5831,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746\/revisions\/5831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}