Children of Bodom: I Worship Chaos Review

Another review that I did for Metal Xtreme. Original here: http://metalxtreme.com/children-bodom-worship-chaos

        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.

Trivium’s Silence In the Snow—A Valiant, but Melancholic Record

Here's an article I wrote for the heavy metal forum, Metal Xtreme. It is a review of Trivium's latest album, Silence In the Snow. See the original here: http://metalxtreme.com/triviums-silence-snow-valiant-melancholic-record

           Some of you may be familiar with the American heavy metal band Trivium. For those of you aren’t, they’re a power-thrash metal group from Orlando, Florida who’s style tends toward the fast and aggressive, as a good thrash band should, but there is also something epic about their sound, even in their earlier work which was more metalcore. Trivium is one of my favorite bands. Almost every song they’ve ever written is on my iPod and I own all of their studio albums, one of the few bands that I can make this claim about. So when I heard that they had a new album coming out in October, I had high hopes for it. They’ve never let me down. Until now… kind of. Let me explain.

           Silence In the Snow marks a bit of a departure from Trivium’s usual style. It is often the pleasure of Matt Heafy, the band’s front man and one of their guitarists, to sing with unclean vocals, or scream. He doesn’t do it with whole songs like in death metal, just with certain lyrics. However, Silence doesn’t have any unclean lyrics at all. Reports say that Heafy blew his voice out in 2014 and started working with vocal coach Ron Anderson teaching him a more melodic approach. Whether that’s a positive or negative is largely subjective, but for those of us who have gotten used to Heafy’s screaming, we definitely notice it missing.

          Another thing that may have added to Trivium’s altered sound is that they have a new drummer, Matt Madiro. Before him was Nick Augusto who played on In Waves (2011) and Vengeance Falls (2013). But, so what, right? Bands go through line-up changes. Well I bring it to your attention because I believe their original drummer, Travis Smith who played from Ember to Inferno (2003) to Shogun (2008), was one of the best drummers in all of heavy metal alongside others like Joey Jordison of Slipknot and The Rev of Avenged Sevenfold. Since Smith’s departure, there definitely seems to be something lacking in Trivium’s music. Drums are tricky—when they’re good, they’re fucking great; but when they’re mediocre or worse, they’re just sort of there.  Don’t misunderstand me, both In Waves and Vengeance Falls have some really great songs on them, and not everything done by Trivium before that was immaculate, but something does feel missing since Shogun.

           While I was listening to Silence In the Snow, I also noted something unusual about Trivium—their music on this album has a strong melancholic and somber tune, almost like the band is mourning a loss. It’s a quality to their music that isn’t usually heard except for select songs. On Silence, I heard it in every song, including the bonus tracks. There were also more songs on this album that seemed to have (vaguely) romantic elements. The three songs where I picked this up are “The Ghost That’s Haunting You”, “Until the World Goes Cold”, and “The Thing That’s Killing Me”. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Trivium being romantic; in fact, one of my favorites of theirs, “This World Can’t Tear Us Apart”, I would consider to be a true power ballad (unlike songs like “Silent Lucidity” or “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn”). It’s just that Trivium isn’t known for romantic or sappy music. Again, it feels like the band has suffered a loss or Heafy broke up with his girlfriend. (Maybe he did, I don’t get involved in the personal lives of musicians.)

          Something that also bothered me about this album was that there were songs that seemed almost like filler to me: “Dead and Gone”, “Pull Me From the Void”, and “Rise Above the Tides”. Despite two of the three making it onto my iPod, they all struck me as not quite good enough. Very few songs are 100% perfect, but some songs are better than others. And then some songs are 50/50, or have the bad about them hold down the good (that’s why I don’t listen to 30 Seconds to Mars or Slayer). These three songs all teeter on that 50/50 edge with “Pull Me” having what’s good about it be held back by what’s bad about it. I mean, I want to like these songs more than I do, but I just can’t.

            So, despite all this grayness and badness, is there any reason to listen to Silence? I would argue there is. For me, the best songs on this album are the titular song, “Silence In the Snow” which was originally written for Shogun, “The Ghost” and “The Thing” despite their melancholic romantic overtones, and the bonus tracks, “Cease All Your Fire” and “The Darkness of My Mind” (which gets my vote as the best song on Silence). “The Ghost” and “The Thing” appeal to me because I’m just an angsty teenager at heart, but the other three are all about as close as one can get to what Trivium should be, like what they were in their heyday. These three are fast, furious, and have Trivium’s stylistic groove that makes you want to dance, and not just head bang. As for the other songs that I haven’t mentioned, they’re good enough to make my personal cut, but there’s nothing so remarkable about them that they’re worth mentioning. The biggest problem with Silence is that while it has the musical stylings and progressions of Trivium, that little indiscernible spark that is undeniably Trivium is missing.

              In conclusion, is this album worth getting? Despite my review, I say yes, to both the new listener and Trivium fans of old. Fans will be slightly disappointed and underwhelmed with the presentation of Silence In the Snow, but there are gems here. As for the new listener, you could do worse than listen to Trivium. And who knows, my review may have been negative enough for you to lower your expectations and be completely blown away by what you actually hear. Trivium has that ability.