Zespół powstał w 1993 roku i od tamtej pory wydali 10 albumów studyjnych. "Hexed" to po raz kolejny niesamowita dawka energii, melodii, szaleńczych partii gitarowych, czyli wszystkiego tego, za co fani pokochali ekipę dowodzoną przez utalentowanego gitarzystę i wokalistę, Alexi Laiho. Perfekcyjny mix melodyjnego death metalu i zabarwionego black metalem thrashu. Fani charakterystycznych dla lat 80-tych melodii również znajdą tu coś dla siebie.
CHILDREN OF BODOM RELEASE THEIR TENTH ALBUM "HEXED"! Formed in Espoo, Finland in 1993 originally under the moniker Inearthed, CHILDREN OF BODOM had an extraordinary start to their career. Their '90s take off was so impressive that many new metal bands still look up to it today - almost all of their albums earned platinum or gold status in Finland and over the past twenty five years they've become regulars on some of the world's biggest stages. 2019 beckons in a new era for a revitalized and bloodthirsty Hate Crew, who will present their 10th studio album "Hexed" on March 8th. It's been three years since the release of "I Worship Chaos" and Bodom have taken time out around touring to carefully develop this new work, which packs a hell of a punch. History tells us that having an extensive time frame to work on a project can often result in procrastination and loss of focus - but with "Hexed" the reverse has manifest in this 11 track, impressively stripped back melo-death, rockn-roll-rampage. "This road's gonna kill me," exhorts shredder extraordinaire Alexi Laiho on the album's opening track "The Road" - paying homage to the determined decades which the guys have spent slogging it out on the tarmac, undoubtedly one of the toughest aspects to a musician's career. Alexi opens up on this: "...I've been living on the road for over 20 years, and I'm sure that every single touring musician would agree that at some point it just becomes a blur and you don't even know what the hell's going on. You feel like it's going to kill you, but you keep doing it no matter what. It's kind of a drug because you can't stop. I can't. I'm going to do it as long as I liveŚthere's no other way." Musically, "The Road" quickly betrays the band's increasingly sophisticated approach to melody, evoking shades of Rush in the '80s. "I'll take that as a compliment," laughs Laiho, at that assessment. "People have said that the album is generally catchier. So, I started thinking about that, perhaps the song structures are easier to grasp on initial listen. But there's some crazy shit in there, almost progressive or at least technical. But you are right, there are certain melodies across the album that could have come from jazz songs, although they're completely metal with us, of course (laughs). " Another highlight to "Hexed" is "Hecate's Nightmare", an almost gothic outlier on what is for all intents and purposes a traditional all-guns-blazing Children of Bodom blowout. "That's a lot of people's favourite song actually", notes Alexi, "with that creepy music box opening keyboard thing. But then it builds up and it's a really catchy song. Just talking about the chorus itself, I mean it totally could have been an '80s Ozzy Osbourne song. That's the sort of stuff I grew up with and I still listen to. And those lyrics, I've always been into this witchy stuff and the different goddesses of the underworld. I'd been reading about Hecate a lot and before I knew it, I just started to write a song about it. But it's a fictional story of two people trying to ask for help from Hecate and she helps them. They keep fucking it up and then eventually she gets pissed-off and you do not want to get that chick pissed-off." As usual, and as can be heard in this very much hit-ready song, keyboardist Janne Wirman is a big part of the Bodom sound. Laiho agrees, "Yes, he's played a big part of every single album, but this time this might seem even more prominent only because of the sounds that he uses. Because the funny thing is that on, let's say, 'I Worship Chaos' or 'Halo of Blood', the keyboards were there all the time, but you might not even know that they're there because he's doubling my guitars with some insane, super-low octave sound that doesn't really stick out. So maybe he pops out more on this album, and I guess he has more of a main role in a lot of parts of the songs." Underscoring their overall vision is the hard and modern production of longtime sound-shaper Mikko Karmilla, who Laiho can't praise enough. In an album packed full of killer tracks, "Under Grass and Clover" - once more, a song blessed with melodies that evoke images of both '70s prog and '80s pop metal - has been picked out for extra attention by Alexi. A curious addition to the album, says Alexi, is a twisted second go at an old Bodom song. "We re-recorded a song called "Knuckleduster" that was originally on the 'Trashed, Lost and Strungout' EP that came out in 2004, and we all thought that it was a great song. It was kind of overlooked and we just figured that we needed to do it again - it needed to be heard again. But I had no idea what I sang on that song; like no frigging idea except for the chorus. So I had to rewrite the lyrics and I had to... well at least I tried to write 'em so that they would sound kind of like the original did. As for the lyrics, it's just another vent about how I don't like somebody." "Knuckleduster" is delivered with Alexi's typical throat-shredding vocal style, but look out for a slight variant within a gem of a track called "Platitudes and Barren Words": "My voice, obviously, I'm not doing clean vocals," muses Laiho, "and I won't -not with this fucking band, like never - that I can promise you. But that punk rock thing in that song, even though I am adding a bit of melody, it's still more screaming than singing. Call it punk rock, but it's maybe more Alice Cooper meets death metal." A material change for the better on "Hexed" is the addition of axeman Daniel Freyberg (ex-Naildown and ex-Norther) to the band. "Hexed" is a high-energy, up-tempo record seething with new life but also all of the Children of Bodom trademarks that millions of fans around the world have grown to appreciate. Their mix of melo-death meets blackened thrash with a neo-classical twist, and piercing Derek Sherinian-intense keyboards peppered with Alexi's venomous vocal bile, is what makes a Bodom spread so engaging. And it also explains why the Hate Crew continues to wow crowds across the globe, their reputation continues to grow as a fearsome live act with incredible technical proficiency. Stronger than ever and evidently thrilled to be in such great health, "Hexed" is beckoning Children of Bodom into a new era of world domination.
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