Follow the Reaper

This is in my opinion the last Children of Bodom release that was still 100% good and true and metal and everything... This album is a masterpiece. This is one of the albums that actually made me want to play the guitar.

This is a great progressive power metal album. The lyrics are not as childish as on later releases, the riffs are fresh and over the top, the solo’s are exquisite, the tempo is varied, you name it it’s got it. Before Follow the reaper CoB released some good albums, but they sounded like some kind of angry Stratovarius spin-off. With this album their sound matured and how! The songs are well built yet surprising, and the emphasis is put on no nonsense guitar violence. It was before the bullshit-American-core-influenced songwriting they suffered from afterwards. From then on they went into a downwards spiral that resulted in today’s Relentless Reckless Forever.

Instant classics are Everytime I Die, Follow the Reaper, Bodom After Midnight, but that doesn’t mean the other tracks are fillers. I have only one reproach, the length of the album is much too short, especially because if you bought it in 2000 like me you paid the price of a full album. 38 minutes is good for an EP, but for a full album? Not sure about this. This is also why I don’t give 95 %, although the music has the required quality for such high marks.