CHILDREN OF BODOM
Follow The Reaper
(Nuclear Blast Records)
41:14min

It’s been amazing how much popularity CHILDREN OF BODOM have been achieving lately (especially in Asia and their native Finland, these guys seem to be huge!) and their new studio record (following the “Tokyo Warhearts” live-album) proves that they hadn’t reached their evolution’s peak yet! Their very first album “Something Wild” pretty much shocked the scene with an extreme mixture of super bombastic keyboards, great technical musicianship, loads of 80s style melodic guitar-pieces and still raw Black / Death Metal type of vocals. The second studio output “Hatebreeder” wasn’t a bad album but somehow didn’t manage to do a massive impression on me. Then again, already at first listening you will be noticing that “Follow The Reaper” is COB’s ultimate release so far! All the way impressive high-speed playing with amazing keyboard-versus-lead guitars firework in the typical COB vein (‘Bodom After Midnight’, ‘Taste Of My Scythe’ or also the title track), their catchiest songs so far (‘Everytime I Die’ and ‘Hate Me’) and a cool cover version of WASP’s ‘Hellion’ (Sorry, no idea on which format / edition this is gonna be one, but it was previously also available as separate MCD / 7″ EP in any case…) all in a really powerful Abyss Studios production and with your beloved overload of guitargod-leads! It doesn’t get any more bombastic and melodic in the realms of Death and Black Metal these days… and hey, “Follow The Reaper” also features plenty of Thrash Metal riffs! Great one!!!

Leif Jensen

Leif Jensen

Related reviews / interviews:
CHILDREN OF BODOM - Hate Crew Deathroll (Frank Stöver )
CHILDREN OF BODOM - Interview (Ramon Claassen)

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