Something Wild

The title of Children of Bodom's debut album, Something Wild, truly is fitting. The sound of this album really is something wild: it's power metal, but with an edge. Not just in the vocals, either, but with a grinding addition of speed metal added on. Tack on a little melody and we have ourselves a winning combination.

It opens with "Deadnight Warrior", a song that gives you the feeling for the rest of the album: heavy-as-fuck riffs, extremely melodic keyboards and vocals that are almost too harsh for a genre based off of power metal. The first four songs on here, including "Deadnight", are all wonderful views into Children of Bodom's musical world, but the album climaxes with the fifth song, "Lake Bodom", and stays on the plateau the rest of the way. Proving even more that they can merge heaviness with melodies, "Lake Bodom" jumps up and down the scales and will definitely get you moving your head along to it. "The Nail" is yet another prime example of this; listen to it and try NOT to move your body to the music. It's difficult.

The album closes off with the only song on here that had actual lyrics prior to recording: "Touch Like Angel of Death". Even with a simple opening and main riff, this song is still very catchy and is one of the band's greatest compositions. No greatest hits album of theirs is complete without this song. Trust me, if you hear it, you shall know why.

For those of you just beginning to get into Children of Bodom, try as hard as you can to get this release first. This is them right before they reached the peak of their career, when they were writing some of their hardest songs. It's classic.