Follow the Reaper

The follow-up to 1999's Hatebreeder made quite big changes in Children of Bodom's musical direction, even though the basic ideas stayed the same; to have keyboards, melodic leadwork and menacing riffs in a tightly structured assault of violent metal, with catchy varying drum beats, insane double bass and Alexi Laiho's monstrous shrieking vocals on top of it all. The bass is still not very obvious in the mix, as the guitars and keyboards are still the main point, but it is quite obvious at several moments and complements well the dark feeling the album induces.
The biggest change from Hatebreeder to Follow The Reaper is, as you've probably figured by now, the change of tempo. While Hatebreeder featured pure fucking riff-madness with tons and tons of (often single-note based) speed metal riffs, Follow The Reaper slows down the pace. Thus, more focus is put onto the atmosphere on this album, and it also leaves place for a little more variety in the riffwork. Nonetheless, this is still pretty fucking fast- Every Time I Die is probably the slowest song they've ever done, but it's still clearly above midpaced.
Another notable change is the song constructions- in Hatebreeder, the guitars and keyboards pretty much worked together and was constructed as a double assault, while on this album you can notice several times when the keyboards pretty much disappear to enhance a certain riff to it's full potential, or vice versa. Children of Decadence, Mask of Sanity and Every Time I Die are good examples of this.
Also, while the instrumental sections on Hatebreeder were pretty much bonded together by tons of leadwork, Follow The Reaper instead features a whole fuckload of solos, both by guitars and keyboards.


So Follow The Reaper made quite a big change for the band, and it does not disappoint at all. Like any Children of Bodom album, there's so much going on at all times so it takes quite a while of heavy listening to fully comprehend the entire album, which is what's great about the band. You always keep discovering new good things about each song, and you never know what's coming next. The songs themselves also take some time to separate from eachother as the general musical direction and the consistently high pace of the songs don't leave much room for variation or personality, but if you listen to the album enough times, then you'll see that each song has distinguishing characteristics.
It's also a very consistent album, with no really weak tracks at all. But some of them do stand out as definitive highlights. Among them we have Every Time I Die, which has a really effective atmosphere set up by smoothly played keyboards. Also mentionable is Mask of Sanity, which has verses alternating between normally paced (for this album, anyway) and total Hatebreeder-madness. Also Taste of my Scythe, which has some really memorable melodies, and the closing track Kissing The Shadows, which has awesome galloping under-chorus riffs and a really fucking nuts solo section: It goes through three guitar solos and two keyboard solos, and provide a completely maddening closing section for the album.
But the definite highlight found on here is definitely Children of Decadence. It has the most memorable and catchy vocal lines ("We're children of rebellion, we'll fight, we'll bleed!"), some of the coolest keyboard melodies, and this one insanely heavy guitar riff.

But really, it's all very good. You'd better get this or you'll be missing out. It's no Hatebreeder, but definitely a worthwhile purchase.
For increased listening pleasure and atmosphere, try listening to a Children of Bodom album with respectively colored lightbulbs, in this case blue...