They were always terrible.

i enjoy the band, Blooddrunk is not terrible after judging from another recent listen. Alexi seems to be taking more of an influence from American music and guitarist like Zakk Wylde and Dimebag these days, rather than his own playing or anything else. I haven't listened to Are You Dead Yet? in a long time, but i like every album before it enough to listen to them a couple times a year.

At least the band fully agrees that Are You Dead Yet? was their least accomplished album, and that they never play any of it live. They realized where they failed. But let's hope they can pick up their pace a bit more and not focus on booze as their prime source of writing influence, since it doesn't work as well for them as they think, and hopefully they wont become "Children of Boredom" with the next album or 2.

I like Hatebreeder, like many of the other people in this thread. The only other album I've listened to is Are You Dead Yet? and well...needless to say, I've never checked out any of their other albums because of it.

I have 3 of their albums. Hatebreeder is awesome, Hate Crew Deathroll is good, and Blooddrunk is ok. I think their last two albums do have some decent songs, but their older stuff is much better.

Crap band, with mostly annoying fans. That's all I have to say.

Alexi is a faggot, COB, Dragonforce, and Opeth are killing metal.

Empyreal has always got my thoughts in before I do.

When I first got into Metal, CoB was awesome, but now that I've seen better things, and experienced better things, they really are nothing special. They have some good songs, but overall, they're boring and (lots/most of) their fans are repulsive and annoying. They are a good gateway band into Metal, but once you're in there, it's hard not to see that they're anything short of decent.

They were one of my gateway bands, and I listened to them a lot. Then I listened to some actually brutal metal and the like, and I've stopped listening to them much. They're still on my iPod but I rarely listen to them. Pop metal basically.

Love Hatebreeder, and FTR and SW are pretty good as well. For some reason I like AYDY a bit too, though not many others seem to. Bloodrunk is one of the worst albums I've heard in the past couple years, however.

They definitely are trying to milk their commercial appeal, which of course upsets many people, but meh - I am happy with their past releases, kudos to them for playing what they want even if they take a lot of crap for it.

Follow the Reaper is a great album if you can get past the vocals, everything else up to Hate Crew Deathroll is okay. Are You Dead Yet and Blooddrunk are bad.

In any case, Kalmah is, always has and always will be better than Bodom.

That's a pretty bold statement. Would you mind explaining how?

First off, whoever said they don't play anything from AYDY is foolish. Living Dead Beat and In Your Face have become live staples, and I doubt they'll be going anywhere.

Bodom is a confusing band to me.

On one hand, they single handedly introduced me to more extreme forms of metal. I heard Sixpounder by dumb luck one day, I thought the chunky main riff was awesome (I was still a big Pantera fan) and I was blown away by the juxtaposition of the really fast and melodic solos over those riffs. This was back when I couldn't stand any music with harsh vocals, I would praise bands that I didn't even like (Led Zeppelin mainly) because that was what was pretty much accepted to be good music. Something about hearing Children of Bodom for the first time opened up thousands upon thousands of new doors for me. I thought Alexi was a fantastic guitarist, the keyboards were insane, and the entire experience was nothing short of completely awesome.

As I delved deeper into metal, I began to see their faults. I always thought their lyrics sucked really badly, but the music was so fantastic that I didn't care. Their fanbase was incredibly retarded. Even as a new fanboy, a lot of the kids that loved them really twisted my tits. Their image just got dumber and dumber, but I let it slide because their four albums were nothing short of pure, auditory sex.

And then Are You Dead Yet? was released. At first, I tried my damnedest to love it. My favorite band couldn't disappoint me. Hell, I even wound up writing a really god awful review for it that I still have yet to take down. I still think a couple songs are okay, but it really was the death knell for my inner fanboy. And as we all know, I can't fucking stand Blooddrunk.

In the end, Follow the Reaper still stands as one of my top 5 all time favorite albums, and I still think it deserves that 100% I gave it. I understand why so many people hate Children of Bodom, but they are immensely important to me and were integral in my musical evolution. Without Bodom, Metallica, Ensiferum, and so many other shunned musical acts, I would have never found Torture Squad, Watain, Melechesh, Heathen, and all of the other bands acclaimed by the underground like us that I listen to. Even if I don't listen to Bodom too much anymore, their influence on me is undeniable, and I can't bring myself to trash Follow the Reaper in any significant way.

I am honestly a pretty big fan of Children of Bodom. It's hard to be a CoB fan sometimes because they are so vehemately hated. I like them though, so I guess who cares what anyone else thinks.

Anyway, in terms of their material, obviosuly "Something Wild", "Hatebreeder", and "Follow the Reaper" are their best albums; I feel "Hate Crew Deathroll" is almost there though. "Are you Dead Yet?" is definately a step down (maybe two) but there are still some solid tracks, and the album as a whole is pretty enjoyable. "Blooddrunk" I have to admit is pretty lackluster. I have to give it a few more spins before I really decide, but thus far I haven't been very impressed.

Overall, I think the band is pretty talented, and I'll never understand how people can think/say that Alexi isn't a talented guitarist. Maybe I don't understand enough about guitar playing, but to me he sounds exceptional, and I will always love his willingness to play as fast as he can and to wank as much as possible...

FYI "Youth Gone Wild" is a Skid Row cover, but the rest of the Norther lyrics are still pretty cheesey.

On topic, CoB is responsible for getting me into music in general, let alone metal, so I'm pretty biased towards them. I bought Follow the Reaper and Hatebreeder blind one day a few years ago just because I thought the album art was cool. That, and I was just desperate to find something I actually liked to listen to. It ended up being all I listened to for a few months. After discovering so many more bands though (and other unrelated genres of music), I've got to say there's definitely a lot of stuff out there that's better. I still listen to them, but not nearly as much as I used to.

Youth Gone Wild is better than anything Norther or Bodom has or will ever do.

Bodom definitely helped get me into extreme metal, but looking back on them, they're totally lame.

I've never been much of a CoB fan, mostly because of Alexi's vocals. That said, I like several of their songs (mostly older stuff). I think they keyboard work can be pretty fucking awesome (intro to In Your Face, Everytime I Die) but I dislike the vocals, especially on the former song mentioned. I like the Aces High cover too, it adds some intensity to the original.

Oddly enough given my general indifference towards CoB, I adore Norther, both old and new. Their N album is pretty damn solid catchy metal, as is Mirror of Madness. Petri kills Alexi in terms of vocals and Norther's songwriting is just superior.

I was a bit misleading in saying that, but their attitude towards AYDY came from here: http://www.scythes-of-bodom.com/site.ph ... nt=alexi08 text is below:

"Zarok: I noticed that you don't play that much Are You Dead Yet? songs anymore, only a few. Did you ever think about playing a longer medley of some songs of that album:

Alexi: Well, on our headlining gigs we do a couple of these songs, like 'Living Dead Beat', 'In Your Face'... We used to play 'Are You Dead Yet?', the title track but we won't play it anymore. Ok, you gotta see it this way: We have six albums out and from our point of view that was the weakest one."

i bet they play those songs regardless of whether or not they want to..because it's more accessible to newer fans and will rake in profit.

If I was going to play something off of "Are you Dead Yet?", I would play "If you Want Peace... Prepare for War".....

the solo(s) is delecious....

Hey, you know, Alexi WAS a badass...

Hatebreeder is their only good release though

To put it plain and simple Children of Bodom use to be a good band but it seems as if now a days their fan base truly is composed of teenage Scene kids, I Admit I enjoyed Are you Dead Yet And most of previous releases of course favoring older ones, but Blood Drunk I couldn't get into, I really just did not enjoy the album.

I use to listen to the band alot but Don't listen to them at all anymore, I see them as a good gateway band into real metal.

Up to this point it seems I'm the only one who listened to AYDY at first. It was way back, when I was just getting into metal, and I didn't really like harsh vocals, the only exceptions at the time being Ensiferum and In Flames. Some of the songs really clicked with me, like the title track, If You Want Peace...Prepare For War, or Trashed, Lost & Strungout, but later on I found that I barely listened to the album anymore.

Then as I started looking into metal more and more, I found a webzine which I read constantly at the time (although now I can't even remember their name) and they had a "hall of fame" with albums they deemed a must-listen, and Follow The Reaper was among them. It was not until later when I got the album, and hooked me way more than at my first experience with AYDY. I remember that at first the vocals were a bit painful to stand, but I usually focused on the riffs and solos, so after a time I barely noticed them. Hell, Follow The Reaper was even the reasons I decided to start playing guitar.

But nowadays I barely listen to them anymore, they are mediocre compared to other bands out there, but they still hold a bit of fun and nostalgia for me.

On Blooddrunk, I was bit curious considering that they hyped it as "turning back to our roots", but I didn't have high expectations, considering the majority of these cases. The early samples were meh, and when I put on the album, Hellbounds On My Trail was a pretty good start, too bad the whole album turns to utter crap after that.

The would be better in doing cover songs in my opinion, especially the pop ones I've listened to...

I have never really been a big fan of Children of Bodom. My first album experience was Are You Dead Yet? and personally, I found some of the tracks to be decent. Otherwise, the album was complete garbage. However, what tracks that I have listened to off of their older releases, such as Everytime I Die off of Follow the Reaper, I really enjoyed. So... My allegiance lies with older Bodom.

I am honestly a pretty big fan of Children of Bodom. It's hard to be a CoB fan sometimes because they are so vehemately hated. I like them though, so I guess who cares what anyone else thinks.



Very tr00, I'm t00 a great CoB fan!! But even though I am a fan, I really did not like Bloodrunk, AYDY!!



I also read abt Opeth killing metal-- Well I disagree once again, Watershed was a fine album!!

Heh heh...maybe if you like music with no redeeming factors, hooks or power to it.

I love hooks, redeeming factors and power...I also liked Watershed to. To each their own

On topic: I gotta say I can't get into their albums other than FTR. I dunno, there's something incredibly fun in it; not to mention how freaking catchy it is.

I actually like Children Of Bodom. I was indifferent to them for years and then earlier this year, I checked out some of the songs from their first few efforts and found myself liking them. I think Hatebreeder and Follow The Reaper are very good. I thought Blooddrunk was decent. I can think of much worse albums released this year such as In Flames' new piece of crap. I'm seeing COB in February with Cannibal Corpse. That will be an interesting show.

Oh, and Watershed is a kick ass album. One of 2008's best IMO.

Alexi is a shameless wanker with much more "recognition" than he deserves.

I would have to say that Opeth is pushing the envelope and evolving their Progressive Metal roots... They are doing nothing to "kill" Metal, just helping it out.

I don't think I'd say Opeth are killing metal, but they aren't helping it.

Well my opinion is just the same as nearly everyone else in this thread. Had they peak with Hatebreeder and went downhill with HCDR, which I found enjoyable and overall a good album but not as near as the first three. I can't sit through a single song from AYDY or Blooddrunk so I'm largely indifferent to them nowadays, although I give them credit for their past achievements and for kind of getting me into extreme metal.

Also, I lol everytime someone despises them just because of Alexi being fucking gay.

Well, his being gay does translate over to the music.

I like Children Of Bodom, but how they were described by the ex-vocalist of Age Of Nefilim, "the keyboards are too megaman-ish" is very true, and the keyboards are kinda annoying sometimes, although I like Children Of Bodom quite a bit.

I second this.

'Something Wild' was an immediate turn-off for me, I never could understand why people thought it to be so good and "groundbreaking". Haven't looked at Bodom since.

Also, Laiho couldn't play a slow melodic solo if his life depended on it -> not a good guitarist. His fast stuff is decent at best.

Oh, please. They aren't killing metal, but if this is "evolving," then I'd rather be in the stone age.

I know this is gonna make a few people scratch thier heads, but Blooddrunk is my favorite album of thiers. And yes, I own every album of thiers and have listened to them all many times and I feel that Blooddrunk stands above them all. Follow the Reaper is very close for 2nd, but there is just something about Blooddrunk that I love. Are You Dead Yet? is thier weakest album, but nothing to hate.

Ah yes, COB. A good friend of mine is probably the biggest COB fanboy ever. I've seen them live, and listened to all their albums, and while they may be good with playing their instruments, they just don't do it for me. Of course, maybe it is because they were never a metal 'gateway' band for me.

Though I will admit, that some of the older stuff (Something Wild-HCDR era) isn't half bad.

Children of Bodom had a good run and developed their sound a lot from Something Wild to Follow the Reaper, when they finally polished it and finished it. Hate Crew Deathroll was a good-enough album but already a cliche, but Are You Dead Yet and Blooddrunk are parody albums of themselves. Songs like We're Not Gonna Fall and Blooddrunk where it sounds like Reroute to Remain played through a different rig or Lamb of God with keyboards especially stand out, as well as songs like Bastards of Bodom where it's the joke as transcribed by Kim Goss.

The improvised lyrics (of all of their albums I think Follow The Reaper is the only one more than half the songs make sense), draw a number from a hat solos and Alexi's lazy scream make it difficult for people who are really into a big variety of metal to enjoy because they can see through it. At the same time it's listenable, accessible and available so for a lot of people Bodom and In Flames are the Metallica and Megadeth type bands of today's metal. They are by no means the best but if you hear some of those bands, it leads to interest, and interest leads to stuff like Meshuggah or Death or Dark Tranquility, and then further onward.

The big advantage of their stuff is for most people it's listenable although it may not be the heaviest, most technical, most progressive, etc. I was very disappointed in Blooddrunk, but I could still sit and listen to it.

If Opeth is killing metal, what are the NWoAHM doing?