From Hamilton Ontario.
I was looking up guitar tabs on Tabit.net, and saw children of Bodom being added constantly, looked at the tabs and went "woah this shit looks cool".
My friends then told me "yeah they are fucking wicked, their lead singer is also the lead player", got a few of their songs and fell in love. Bought Follow the Reaper, and Hate Crew Deathroll, and FTR still remains one of my favourite albums.
I found them to be a welcome change from the useal 80's Metallica, and Megadeth I had going on, and they really intruduced me to synth in heavy metal. Up to then I only knew synth from Rush, but they introduced me to a more classicaly influenced style of metal, and Finnish metal in general.