Original: April 26, 2011 Issue 15
By: Manuel Suarez
Staff Writer
Children of Bodom released their seventh studio album “Relentless, Reckless, Forever” on March 8. The album includes 9 new songs. These songs are melodic, aggressive and deep, as are most of Alexi Laiho’s lyrics.
The songs in order on the album are: “Not My Funeral,” “Shovel Knockout,” “Roundtrip to Hell and Back,” “Pussyfoot Miss Suicide,” “Relentless, Reckless, Forever,” “Ugly,” “Cry of the Nihilist,” “Was it Worth it?” and “Northpole Throwdown.” “Was it worth it?” was released with “Angels don’t kill” live prior to the album’s release.
I am going to start with “Not my funeral.” The keyboard effects fit very well and sound good. There was nothing wrong with that. The guitar melodies could have been improved. This song, besides the chorus, needed more melody and feeling. It sounds very different than a Melodic Death Metal album, a sound for which they are known.
The album is still poor. In “Shovel Knockout” melodies are barely better than in the first song, but they still don’t have any feeling. The keyboard helps a lot, as it helped Children of Bodom’s sound on their first album. I expected more in “Shovel Knockout.” Alexi Laiho can do a lot better than this. I am not going to say that the album is good. Its lyrics are aggressive, rude and give good tone to the song’s message while singing.
“Roundtrip to Hell and Back” has bad tones in Laiho’s voice. It lasts almost four long minutes.
“Pussyfoot Miss Suicide” is a very poor song. It doesn’t have either melody or feeling when you listen to it. The solo doesn’t make you feel awesome as other COB albums.
“Relentless, Reckless, Forever” is not as bad as the previous song. It doesn’t have the same catchy rhythms that “Hate me!” (Follow the Reaper) has.
“Ugly,” like most of the songs in this album, is poor. Why? It doesn’t have soul, it doesn’t have what all the old Alexi Laiho’s songs with Children of Bodom have.
“Cry of the Nihilist” lasts three minutes, and it seems very long when you are listening to it. The lyrics don’t make too much sense and there isn’t much to enjoy.
“Was it worth it” would be one of the two or three good songs in the album, but the lyrics don’t make any sense at all. The worst part of the song is the solo. Alexi Laiho could have done something good here.
“Northpole Throwdown“ wasn’t bad at all. The lyrics are not available even in the booklet.
Alexi Laiho composed the music and wrote the songs for this album. According to Wikipedia, the album is number one in the Finnish Albums Chart. In Finland, the same day it was released, it sold 10,000 copies. The album comes in different editions. It is certified gold and as of March 10, 100,000 copies had been sold worldwide.
Their first albums are good because of their deep lyrics, their catchy riffs, and the feelings in their melodies in the songs. Blooddrunk, released in 2008 shows a possibility that the band is not doing their best anymore.
If you want to listen to something good from Children of Bodom, you should get any of their old albums, because this one is not good at all, it needs better melodies, solos, keyboard lines and vocals.
