Children Of Bodom have been one of the more highly publicized bands of the past couple of years, and generally speaking, anything which garners such positive feedback from so wide a spectrum of people usually turns out to be complete shit. My initial reaction to this was "what a load of total bullshit" - neo-classical traditional metal influences (think Iron Maiden if Yngwie Malmsteen was a member), saturated with sickly sweet synths, topped off with your "run of the mill" NWOMSDM (or is that NWOSMDM ?) vocal style...all the ingredients necessary for a snore fest of prorations equal to the advertising budget used to promote this band. So what did I do ? I threw this onto my ever growing pile of "been there, done that" CD releases, and forgot about it.

A few weeks later, I was listening to some free compilation or other, and all of a sudden through the usual muck of mediocrity that makes up most of these comps, there was this blast of highly energetic metal that caught my attention and made me think "Hey, not bad - let's look at the packaging and see exactly who this is" - you could very well imagine my surprise at finding out that it was Children of Bodom, and with a track from the very same album I had previously dismissed as shite! So, approaching the album once again, this time with a slightly more open mind, I gave it another few spins, hoping to find my initial displeasure with it was merely a backlash from the hype machine surrounding the band - but once again, I found myself on the verge of being comatose after only 3 songs. So what's the problem here ? Why is it that they can managed to ignite the fire, but cant seem to keep the flame going ? Simple - while Children Of Bodom aren't anything too special, there's so much out there even WORSE in comparison that they stand out, and in small doses they do capture ones attention, but give the band 15 minutes and they pretty much run their course - song after song after song using the same formulaic approach with little to no difference between tracks except how much guitar wanking will take place during the solo...

I'm sure there's a place for Children Of Bodom out there - those who long for technical yet catchy traditional metal, but who are bored of the usual 80s metal vocal style, or those who like the melodic Swedish death metal sound but wish the bands had a bit more of a metal "flair" to them...but personally, I'll stick to hearing the band in their best context : alongside other crap bands where they stand a chance to shine for a few brief minutes...

© 2000 chorazaim