CHILDREN OF BODOM - This Is War, Man!

One of the highly anticipated metal albums of 2011, CHILDREN OF BODOM’s new outing Relentless Reckless Forever, promises to fuel the fans’ ongoing love / hate relationship with the band’s music in a big way. Reactions to lead-off single ‘Was It Worth It’ were mixed, as expected, with one side of the fence praising the album’s supposed back-to-the-roots focus, and the other slamming the Finns for not repeating the darkness and debauchery of 2008’s Blooddrunk. An interesting battle in that Children Of Bodom’s signature shred – now seven albums young – remains fully intact, with keyboardist Janne Wirman’s musical presence being the only aspect of the band’s sound that has fluctuated over the years. In the case of Relentless Reckless Forever he can be heard large and loud, instantly recalling two of the Children’s strongest albums, Hate Crew Deathroll (2003) and Hatebreeder (1999). Sorry to say, however, this isn’t an intentional return to early form.
 

“It just happened that way,” Wirman says of the band going back to the obnoxious neo-classical keyboard-happy sound that became their trademark. “It’s funny because our producer, Matt Hyde, did the first mix of the album by himself, and for me it was the first time ever that I didn’t come in to do the keyboard levels. Matt did the mix and I was happy with it. Usually I go back and forth to the studio and change things in the mix five times a day (laughs). This time I was fine with everything, which was really weird. Mikko Karmilla (producer) has been mixing us for years and I can drive from home to the studio in about seven minutes, and I’m so used to having opinions about every little fucking thing. This time I had nothing to say, which was strange (laughs).”

With that in mind, Wirman puts to rest the ongoing nitpicking about his supposed reduced role on Are You Dead Yet? in 2005. Frontman Alexi Laiho insists that Wirman has always been an integral part of Children Of Bodom’s sound, and Wirman confirms he agreed to final song arrangements that often came across as keyboard-less.

“(Laughs) Just blame me, that’s fine. It was funny because when we released Are You Dead Yet? everybody was asking why there weren’t a lot of keyboards on the album, and there was just as much on it as on every album before it. They were just mixed and arranged a little differently. We try to avoid doing the same album over and over again. That’s why people didn’t like Are You Dead Yet?.”

Call having Wirman’s keyboards back up front a return to the band’s roots if you will, but he's adamant about the fact that it wasn’t planned.

“You’ve been interviewing us for so long that you know we don’t sit down and say ‘Hey, we should do this and that.’ We don’t discuss those things, they just happen. I’m really happy with all the new songs and how the album sounds, but we never said at any point that we wanted it to sound like Hate Crew Deathroll or anything like that.”
 

In all honesty, the first time through Relentless Reckless Forever was something of a letdown. Nothing stuck, demanding repeat listens. Slowly but surely the record became a regular spin, going on three weeks as of press time. Wirman completely understands any initial misgivings going in.

“Yeah, even for me, the first time I heard it I was like, ‘Huh? Really?’ I took a few more listens and then it was ‘Okay, now I get it…’ When you’re working on an album you have a certain vision of how it’s going to be, so if something is a little different it messes with your head a bit.”

“It took a lot of time to write the album,” he adds, “and I’m glad we took the time because we were almost rushing it. We were supposed to enter the studio earlier than we did, but we ended up moving the schedules and spent two more months working on the songwriting. It wasn’t the easiest album to write, but not because we were thinking we don’t want to sound like this or that.”

According to Wirman the band continues to write songs with Laiho as the primary hellraiser, a formula that has been in place since Day 1. Children Of Bodom is no longer the Alexi Laiho How-To Revue, though, with Wirman and his bandmates taking equal shots at bashing the songs into shape.

“Songwriting with Alexi, sometimes he shows up at the rehearsal space with a full song, everything pretty much arranged, and other times he shows up with one riff and it takes weeks to make a song out of it. The band has become a bigger part of the whole arrangement process, though. On the first three albums Alexi pretty much had all the ideas down for the songs, but nowadays he brings riffs and the band sits down together and arranges them. With each album the other guys have had more to say about what’s going on with the arrangements.”

As the press junket winds down, the band’s focus turns to full-on roadwork for the next couple years. The Ugly Tour, named for one of the songs on Relentless Reckless Forever, promises to be a much more enjoyable affair for everyone involved compared to the Blooddrunk cycle.

“This time around I’m really looking forward to it because we’re going to start by headlining in Europe,” Wirman explains. “I think what totally sucked with Blooddrunk and blew the whole fucking thing is that it took us a full year after the release to get around to headlining Europe. I thought it was totally ridiculous that it took that long to get there. Then we did a support tour with SLIPKNOT right before our own headline tour, and the most hardcore Children Of Bodom fans came to those Slipknot shows, so our headline tour maybe wasn’t the most successful tour we’ve done. We’ve still got the same management, but trust me, I gave them enough shit about organizing stuff for this album. It’s not gonna happen again (laughs).”

Watch for BW&BK's exclusive interview with Alexi Laiho, coming March 5th.