![]() ![]() We’re talking about a really small underground metal circuit. There was a lot of pressure to conform, but then again, I just didn’t care about that. GW So what was that scene like when you were in your teens? Were guys in your neighborhood playing death metal? You pretty much have to play like shit! You know, turn the distortion and treble knob up to fucking 10, and go! I loved it, but I kept practicing and secretly listening to Steve Vai, or whatever. Guitar solos are not allowed in true black metal. I was all about black metal, but in those circles you were not allowed to play lead guitar. I really embraced that music when I was around 15. Swedish death metal bands like Entombed and Dismember and the whole Norwegian black metal scene began picking up steam. LAIHO Yeah, and then gradually the Nordic countries began developing their own metal underground. GW Did you hear American music all the time in Finland? They really had this appeal because they were so…I don’t know…just so fast and insane that it made a huge impact on me. LAIHO I remember hearing “Arise” by Sepultura, and thinking, Holy fuck! Who are these guys? I was, like, 10 years old, and thought they were probably evil and crazy. GW Can you give me some sense of how you progressed from listening to Van Halen or Randy Rhoads to embracing the music of a band like Obituary? It led to harder music like Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth, and ultimately to death metal and black metal. Bands like Twisted Sister and Mötley Crüe, and guitarists like Van Halen and Randy Rhoads always had good guitar riffs and solos. Did Eighties hair metal have an impact on you when you were growing up? GW On Skeletons you covered “Talk Dirty to Me” by Poison. It would be great to hear Britney cover one of their songs. It was melodic and super-aggressive at the same time. It was really a “punch-in-the-face” sort of album. The entire Cowboys from Hell album, for example, had great catchy riffs, but at the same time it had elements of extreme metal. LAIHO Pantera did it well, especially in the early days. GW What other bands do you think do a good job of balancing hooks and aggression? It’s played really well and recorded professionally. I think the only way you can earn the right to do something like that is to just have the attitude that, “I don’t give a fuck if you have a problem with us covering Britney Spears.” And all jokes aside, we put a lot of effort into the arrangement. My keyboard player and I were slamming White Russians and we decided to cover it. One night Britney Spears’ “Oops, I Did It Again” was looping over and over, and I could just hear a metal version of it in my head. We have a bunch of mix CDs on our tour bus that jump from Norwegian black metal, like Darkthrone, to Samantha Fox to Slayer. GUITAR WORLD Even though Children of Bodom are an extreme metal band, the group’s appreciation of classic song structure is evident on Skeletons in the Closet, where you cover songs by everyone from Britney Spears to Anthrax to Creedence Clearwater Revival.ĪLEXI LAIHO Skeletons in the Closet is an accurate reflection of what we like. Zakk’s playing is just so over-the-top crazy, and he’s a great singer, too.” Lee and Zakk were some of my biggest influences. “Everyone who was involved with Ozzy Osbourne were the guys I looked up to when I was learning to play. ![]() “Zakk is one of the best, for sure,” he says. I would never think, Okay, now I’m finally good enough.”ĭoes that mean Laiho is pumped and primed to, er, “Finnish off” Zakk Wylde in the upcoming guitar slugfest? “I’m still hungry to play and improve,” he says. For example, on “If You Want Peace…Prepare for War” from 2005’s Are You Dead Yet?, he takes most of what’s good about the past 20 years of hard rock lead playing and condenses it into concise, violent blasts of sonic rock salt.īut as Laiho reveals when we sit down with him to discuss the upcoming Berzerkus tour, he’s still growing as a guitarist. Looking like a trendy, young vampire, and shredding like a 21st century Randy Rhoads, Alexi mixes bluesy hard rock ferocity with dashes of Western classical harmony that rarely sounds fussy in the way that European metal often can. ![]() Not surprisingly, Laiho, Bodom’s vocalist and guitarist, has been singled out for attention. ![]()
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