The more time I've had to reflect on this the bigger the impact I realised it's had. Alexi was only 4 years older than me and Children of Bodom were more important to me than I realised, the more I've thought about it.
Before going any further I just want to say I apologise about an earlier comment I made in this thread, which kinda just made sweeping statements about Alexi's life and demons he may or may not have had. I haven't really kept up with him, especially over the last 10-12 years, so it was unfair to make assumptions about his life, and death.
CoB were my gateway to so much extreme metal. Before them, I'd been obsessed with Metallica, which led to Megadeth and ultimately Pantera (probably about 6 months before I heard CoB). Pantera were the most extreme vocals I'd ever exposed myself to at that point in time (this was early '04, and I was 20).
The summer of '04 I made a few new lifelong friends and I remember one of them introducing me to CoB. I can vividly remember the moment. I was sat at our local pub and he had his mp3 player with him. He was like "My cousin sent me a few songs by this band, you'll probably like it". He put the headphones in my ears and I was lucky enough to hear the live version (from Tokyo Warhearts) of Lake Bodom. This shit just had my jaw on the floor. I immediately gave him my mp3 player and asked him to take it home with him and put more of this band on it for me. My friend didn't even know what the band were called, just "Children something".
CoB were the first band that I had to kinda force myself to like harsh vocals with. I just loved the music so much that I just thought, 'I've got to just get used to this'.
Around the same time that I got into them another friend also got into them. He downloaded their back catalogue up to that point (first 4 albums and Tokyo Warhearts) and burnt them all onto CD for me. Man, I didn't even know the song titles, which songs were from which album, I just devoured them. At the end of that year I bought myself a 20gb mp3 player as I'd discovered so much music I needed an upgrade. That was when I was really able to just binge CoB.
I got big into melodeath, with bands like In Flames, also stuff like Lamb of God, Trivium and all those sorts of bands coming out at that time.
CoB's mix of power/thrash/death metal with it's neo classical edge was like anything else I'd heard and Alexi was just the closest thing I'd ever come to having a guitar hero. His solo trade offs with Janne Wirman were just awesome and me and my buddy Chris saw them live many times.
When Are You Dead Yet? came out I was unsure about the direction they'd gone but it became one of my faves by them. Unfortunately for me, everything they released after that just felt like a step down and for me they never reached the heights of those first 5 albums. If I ever did a top 50 albums then Hatebreeder through to Are You Dead Yet? would all be in there.
I'm relistening through all their albums and man, they were just so good. Friends of mine who got them, and were into them, loved them immensely, everyone else I knew just didn't like them at all.
Topic: The official Children of Bodom thread v. RIP Alexi Laiho :( (Read 12235 times)