I am at a loss for words when it comes to opening this review for Children of Bodom: I Worship Chaos, their newest album. I’m not sure what I can say about it that can’t be applied to the band’s past albums. To say that there are songs on Chaos that are aggressive with fantastic intros and solos, but have disappointing verses combined with all too awesome choruses would be like beating a dead horse. All those comments can be applied to almost every song COB has ever done. While it can be said that “once you’ve heard one COB album, you’ve heard them all”, it wouldn’t do the band’s hard work justice because of those certain hits and singles that top all of the others, like “Triple Corpse Hammerblow” (Hate Crew Deathroll, 2003) and “In Your Face” (Are You Dead Yet?, 2005). Because COB doesn’t stray far from firm-held themes and genre, it almost always seems like the same band record after record. While some bands, such as Avenged Sevenfold and Evanescence, experiment with their sound and always seem to be evolving, COB doesn’t really do that.
However, for this album, not everything is the same old COBHC. Going through the track list, the songs that are very reminiscent of old COB are “I Hurt”, “My Bodom (I Am the Only One)”, “I Worship Chaos”, “Hold Your Tongue”, and parts of “Suicide Bomber”. This isn’t to say that these songs are bad. By all means, I rather enjoyed them all. The titular song, “I Worship Chaos” is close to being one of the best songs on the album. The reasons why it isn’t are because it’s overshadowed by the true best songs on the record, “Morrigan” and “Widdershins”, and because at the end of the song, several people can be heard laughing and screwing around. I really wish bands wouldn’t do that at the end of their songs, especially serious ones; it tends to ruin the ambiance of the song.
The songs however on Chaos that aren’t the usual COB are the aforementioned best two as well as “Prayer for the Afflicted”, “All For Nothing”, and the other parts of “Suicide Bomber”. I’ll return to “Morrigan” later, but regarding “Afflicted”, “Nothing”, “Bomber”, and “Widdershins”, all of these songs have much darker tones to them. You may wonder how it’s possible for a death metal band to be darker than it already is, but if you remember my review of Trivium’s Silence In the Snow, you should remember that I said many of the songs on that record are melancholic. Well, that’s how the above songs are darker—they’re melancholic, especially “Prayer for the Afflicted” which heavily reminds me of “Angels Don’t Kill” (Hate Crew Deathroll).
As for “Morrigan”, this song is very different from the usual Bodom affair in that it almost sounds like love song. Indeed, this analysis isn’t too far off base as Alexi Laiho, COB’s lead guitarist and singer, said on the “Making Of: I Worship Chaos” DVD that “Morrigan” is about a mortal man who is obsessively in love with a goddess. This is a true departure from COB’s usual lyrical themes of death, destruction, chaos, pain, and suicide. They even made a music video for it, but it confused the hell out of me and didn’t have the stereotypical appearance of the band jamming, so I don’t recommend watching it. But despite all that, “Morrigan” is still an awesome song with plenty of intrigue even if the aggression is toned down slightly. Laiho even said on the DVD that it is one of his favorites.
Lastly, there are four songs I haven’t mentioned: they are “Horns” and the three bonus tracks: “Mistress of Taboo”, “Danger Zone”, and “Black Winter Day”. I don’t know what it is about “Horns”, but for whatever reason I just don’t like it. In my notes, I refer to it as chaotic quite a few times which may be the reason why. One of the reasons why I listen to COB is because they are melodic death metal. There have been a few metal bands that I just simply can’t listen to because their “songs” just sound like a bunch of noise with no musicality to them whatsoever. “Horns” isn’t completely devoid of musicality, it does have a beat and features a great solo, but I just can’t get behind it. As for the bonus songs… oh boy. If you’re a fan of COB then you’ll know that it is often their pleasure to do covers of other songs and offer them on their albums as bonuses. And the songs they’ll cover vary widely in terms of genre. On Are You Dead Yet?, they did a cover of “Oops!… I Did It Again” by American pop princess Britney Spears. So, some of the covers that they do can be a little weird, i.e. Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone”. “Danger Zone” is one of those classic ‘80’s pop rock songs that is covered in that ‘80’s cheese that everything in the ‘80’s was covered in. It’s a cover that makes you want to laugh out loud. “Mistress of Taboo”, originally performed by shock and punk rock group The Plasmatics, features an interesting duet with Laiho and guest vocalist Wednesday 13, frontman of Murderdolls. Though, sometimes I swear I can hear a third voice, like original Plasmatics singer Wendy O. Williams. The third voice definitely seems feminine, but unless COB has found a way to resurrect the dead, she’ll have to be ruled out. “Taboo” also fills in COB’s requirement for a token party song on this album. Now “Black Winter Day” is much more like COB, which makes sense since it was originally performed by fellow Finnish metal act Amorphis. But in exchange for COB’s usual aggressiveness, this song features more melancholic tunes. But, out of the three bonus songs, the only one I would really recommend is “Mistress of Taboo”.
All in all, I highly recommend Children of Bodom’s I Worship Chaos. While most of it may be generic COB, generic COB is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. And the songs that break away from generic COB definitely deserve to be heard and appreciated. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give I Worship Chaos a 4.5 out 5. If you like melodic death metal or are a long time member of the Hate Crew, you’ll love this album.
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