COB Interviews

Nobody makes money with selling albums. Its the live shows. Making a bit more money with selling cds isnt that wrong.

Yeah, most of the money comes from merch like shirts, and the tour tickets, but the albums are the essential thing which makes them sell...
 
Maybe someday if I calmed myself down they might be interested to answer their most in depth fan questions about the music ever. I don't know. Maybe it would be better to do in text mode since Janne and Kal would probably give me an asswhoopin'.

But to be honest it would be interesting if I could compare stuff about albums and ask about the music and live setlist, but I don't want to annoy them. Some information passes both ways like this too.. like I didn't even realize I'm an idiot before they revealed it to me. :)

I did get a chance once and found out some pretty exciting stuff.



That's right also. COB is still SOMEHOW "reachable." Bands with "divine" status are always a different thing. But COB will never be one because they don't act like something they're not. Alexi has a little status tho, but mostly they're down to earth - and hosting a role is something that attracts millions of kids searching for different roles to try while they're growing up. One thing is they dress normally, something that for example Nightwish doesn't do.

Speaking of which I think COB could try different outfits too. There's a vid from the last tour where Alexi wears a normal proper woolen shirt and it looks totally cool.

I actually feel the same way and would like to see that.

Not saying I want them to go crazy and wear silly costumes, but it'd be cool to seem some sort of evolution and variation.


I've never understood why some people are so dead set against it. Everyone here on the forum seems to be pretty moderate concerning this- but some people, regardless of how the band is doing musically, decide they hate the band simply because they know too many other people who now like the band.

I really don't get it. To use a smaller example than making the entire metal genre bigger, it really follows the same idea as to why some bands I'll download their music, and some I buy their cds religiously. Some bands who, in my opinion, are mediocre, I will download their music. But some bands, like COB, I buy their albums and merch because I want to give the band money because I feel like they deserve it- and I encourage other people to do the same.

I completely agree.

Because publicity always attracts idiots, and idiots and sellout music support each other. COB is a hard art so it doesn't give much room for fucking around with the music even if they wanted to do what Metallica did with St. Anger, but it would be naive to think bands don't care about their albums selling (and shirts and tickets). Every band makes conscious moves to some extent to make their shit sell. It's 100% alright, but adjusting music to mainstream (by cutting off solos or whatever) is unforgivable.

But yeah, if WIWI is a one off on the album, distinctly more accessible and they wanted to tell the world they exist, I'd not blame them, the skateboarding video is a great idea too. Don't you think it's fucking wrong or kinda weird this music exists and most people don't know about it and listen to crap instead. If they have one track that's not very extreme metal but it's good on the ears then so what. Let's just hope the album is some dirty real Bodom metal and buries these sellout accusations.

Publicity and more fans does bring in more idiots, but who cares. Let the idiots listen, it shouldn't effect your enjoyment of the music or the band.

And as for the new album, I expect it to be just as divisive amongst existing fans as any of their new albums - if not more so. But with that aside, I expect it to be great, with really quality songs and a lot of depth, even if on the surface it may seem more catchy and whatnot.

Afterall, isn't that a mark of great songwriting? You can oversimplify things, yes. But you can also make them overly complicated as well. The best songs strike a balance between the two, somewhere between instant hook and long-term depth.

Are some amazing songs hard to digest on the first listen (or more)? Definitely. But that difficulty of listening, in of itself, is not what makes it good. And many songs that are hard to listen to and understand at first (if not always), are NOT good.

Getting 'mainstream' is not neccesarily a bad thing. I mean you can of course make some shitty metal versions of Kesha or something, but look.

Behemoth, very fucking brutal band, has sold so many of recent album's copies that it turned platinum in Poland. And the same with their recent DVD. A blackened death metal managed to show up pretty high on Billboard, and believe me, they have not turned int a commercial band everyone here seems to be afraid of.
So basically while you may go simply mainstream, you may also BRING serious music TO the mainstream, which is not bad at all. It is great I think. If they can sell more and more, gain new fans and not stop being so mighty brutal, so can CoB.

Exactly. Getting more popular doesn't necessarily mean dumbing down your sound (though some bands end up doing that). It can also mean getting more people exposed to music that has more depth than most popular music. And sometimes, an album just sells really well because it IS really good, and not because it got commercialized and the band sacrificed quality for sales.

For instance, just as an example, "And Justice for All" by Metallica.


Yeah, most of the money comes from merch like shirts, and the tour tickets, but the albums are the essential thing which makes them sell...

Definitely. At this point, albums are useful promotional tools for getting people to see a band live, rather than the primary source of income.
 
As I see it, the point here is that metal becoming more popular or mainstream isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can be. For example, a lot of black metal shows have a very special atmosphere, which is as important, or even more important than the music itself. A lot different than your "basic metal/rock gig". It's hard to explain, but these pics from a recent Watain show maybe hint a little.

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The point being, that the atmosphere and the whole ritual would really have watered down if the place was full of 15-year old scene kids doing moshpit or some shit like that. Of course this doesn't apply to every metal band, but becaming "too" popular or mainstream can be a bad thing.
 
Fck i want to see Watain live :mad:

Whole popularity comes with internet too. Normally people maybe live their whole life without knowing anything about metal, but you have youtube where you can randomly run across to metal. But yeah to older fans it's hard tu understand how can somone like new stuff more than the old ones.
 
Getting 'mainstream' is not neccesarily a bad thing. I mean you can of course make some shitty metal versions of Kesha or something, but look.

Behemoth, very fucking brutal band, has sold so many of recent album's copies that it turned platinum in Poland. And the same with their recent DVD. A blackened death metal managed to show up pretty high on Billboard, and believe me, they have not turned int a commercial band everyone here seems to be afraid of.
So basically while you may go simply mainstream, you may also BRING serious music TO the mainstream, which is not bad at all. It is great I think. If they can sell more and more, gain new fans and not stop being so mighty brutal, so can CoB.

Behemoth isn't even nearly as close to gaining mainstream popularity as Children of Bodom. They've gotten more popular in the last few years, but they're still not that close to being mainstream.
 
Behemoth isn't even nearly as close to gaining mainstream popularity as Children of Bodom. They've gotten more popular in the last few years, but they're still not that close to being mainstream.

But it's still a lot more popular than any other blackened death metal band. But seems like this mainstream "issue" is mostly for new extreme metal bands. Slayer for example is one of the most popular metal bands ever, but no one thinks it's mainstream. Deicide is also quite known for being a death metal band, but it's probably the "legendary" factor that saves these bands.
 
^ Don't worry - I wasn't really expecting anyone to translate the whole thing, just tell us if there was anything interesting/new/amusing/whatever in it about
anything, not just the new album :)
 
But it's still a lot more popular than any other blackened death metal band. But seems like this mainstream "issue" is mostly for new extreme metal bands. Slayer for example is one of the most popular metal bands ever, but no one thinks it's mainstream. Deicide is also quite known for being a death metal band, but it's probably the "legendary" factor that saves these bands.

I suppose that's true.
I agree that it might be the 'legendary' factor, or perhaps just because these older bands have paid their dues, gained credibility and been innovators to some extent.
 
Well there were many funny stories. Apparently sometimes Roope, while everyone else are still sleeping, tends to be awake and clean the tourbus and go by bicycle to everywhere etc. Janne and Jaska said that its quite interesting and amusing sometimes just to follow Roope during the day.
What comes to the new album, they said that this was the first time when they werent there on the spot when the album was being mixed. But they received the songs by email and everyone listened them through and told their opinion and Janne said that even though it was first very weird, it turned out to work quite well.

Btw, apparently there is some stuff in the newest Soundi. Can't get it before the beginning of the next week but since Im then enjoying my holiday, I could translate it if someone else doesnt do it first :)
 
Well there were many funny stories. Apparently sometimes Roope, while everyone else are still sleeping, tends to be awake and clean the tourbus and go by bicycle to everywhere etc. Janne and Jaska said that its quite interesting and amusing sometimes just to follow Roope during the day.
What comes to the new album, they said that this was the first time when they werent there on the spot when the album was being mixed. But they received the songs by email and everyone listened them through and told their opinion and Janne said that even though it was first very weird, it turned out to work quite well.

Btw, apparently there is some stuff in the newest Soundi. Can't get it before the beginning of the next week but since Im then enjoying my holiday, I could translate it if someone else doesnt do it first :)

Much appreciated. :)
 
Well I think the quality of the mix in the samples is very good, you can hear the keyboard in the back and you can hear the notes Henkka is playing in WIWI with his bass which is amazing. Rest is up to how they make their instruments sound and what kinda songs they compose.. so no complaints about the mix based on these samples.. What I can tell is Shovel KO had that actual COB spirit in the sound, while WIWI does not. I just hope it sounds brutal and atmospheric like Shovel and not like WIWI which sounds warm and kind / commercial.
 
See, when you don't always ask the same old questions, the whole interview is a lot more interesting to watch.

Thanks a lot Wilkinson!
 
^^Thanks for posting, cool to have a bit different interview :)
There was a small article about COB and the new album in Sue-magazine. Not really worth translating, all the stuff you already know. But one quote from it said by Janne:
"They complain in the internet that nowadays we are just touring all the time in the States so we decided to begin the tour for the new album from Europe. The gigs in Finland have became very important waypoints for us since we don't play there so often anymore."