I Worship Chaos

For all their antics, the slow burn rock stardom and almost deliberate attempt to forget where musically they came from, a part of me will always hold onto the Hate Crew for helping cultivate my tastes into the more melodic side of extreme metal. That part is also able to take some of the finer bits of their more recent material and run with them despite them not being as up to snuff as the works that put them on the map in the first place and ignore the lesser-tier elements and songs (see: "Blooddrunk" and "Halo of Blood" being decent-to-very-good albums to partake in, whilst "Relentless..." is best left by the uninspired wayside). So it's with that mindset in play, as well as a touch of curiosity to see how well they could fare as a four piece for the first time in their existence, that I jump into an album that, to be perfectly frank, I've been honestly anticipating (if for no other reason than how well "Halo..." turned out to be)...

At this point in the band's existence, it would be best to take them for who/what they are these days as opposed to pining for the old days like past-living spinsters. It could be what's lead to all the throat-cutting in the face of their more recent output from many of you out there, but I could be wrong. All that aside, what we get with "I Worship Chaos" is, upon both initial and subsequent impressions, the most solid example of Bodom going straight melodeath we've gotten in recent years. At best, one may recall the sharper parts of "Hate Crew Death Roll" mixed with the simpler stop-start riffing of "Are You Dead Yet?", yet with a few more sips of espresso upping the ante and intensity. Despite the Children's capacity for angst and antagonism, this ended up being a somewhat fun listen that brings much to the table in terms of appreciation and acceptance (e.g. the bouncy, punk-meets-dance "Hold Your Tongue", for one...). The end result is still able to speak for itself, where the melodic sections, the twisting leads and a deeper sense of atmosphere via harmony, clean sections and keys over simply being heavy makes this a record I feel I could come back to time and again, 'cause dammit if I didn't really enjoy it (in varying degrees, of course...).

There's much more going on within the tracks than we've come to expect with CoB these days, and such a layered effect makes the lesser moments more accessible and the brighter ends memorable and grand, where the overall compositions sound like actual full-on ideas on how and what they are meant to be. Such creative honesty is quite hard to come by these days, and if you can take nothing else away from it, that should be plenty enough. As well, the lack of a second guitarist hasn't seemed to hurt the creative and quality ends of the album, and if nothing else the rhythms sound tighter and more honed than I recall hearing in the past couple works. While not a complete entity like they'd hoped to be with this, the foundation of the work is still plenty concrete and strong with regard to how it all came out in the end. It may not be the wild abandon extremities of old, but it's clearly also not drudging bro-core either. And I'm quite OK with that.

In the end, "I Worship Chaos" is an unexpectedly solid work that thankfully proves the band has the capacity to work within some of their older stomping grounds as they continue to maintain their mainstream status quo. Certainly nothing wrong with that, as they've definitely earned their stripes in spite of expectations and more than a few iffy musical decisions, and to that end I'm sure to return to this when the time and impulse is right. Recommended, and then some.