COB Interviews
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children of COB
Deadnight Drinker
Yeah. BTW, do you think you'll find time to translate that video one that you posted (the one you divided in 5 parts)? Just to know and not expect it if it's not goping to be possible for you to translate.
children of COB
Deadnight Drinker
Ok then. Tell us when you know what you're going to do, and even though we won't understand, put the links here, 
Here you go COCOB this is the one you wanted? the one on myspace?
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7lysb0
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7lysb0
children of COB
Deadnight Drinker
Not much but... http://www.bravewords.com/news/85419
edit: and does any one have new Metal Hammer yet? Scans please?
edit: and does any one have new Metal Hammer yet? Scans please?
SteveMCsteve
Member
gotta love teh interviewer's accent
I'm buying the mag tomorrow so i can type it up then if its not already here. Can't scan it though as my scanner is completley fucked up now. >.<
Lanterns
1 girl in her cups
sleeper666
MetalMutha
Here's the Metal Hammer piece:
They say that people like to slake their thirst on alcohol brewed in countries they have defeated. And on Independence Day, celebrating Finland's freedom from their Russian oppressors, Children of Bodom and Hammer are certainly putting away enough vodka to sink the Battleship Potemkin. The venue is an impressive glass-fronted restaurant in Helsinki overlooking the Baltic Sea and, beyond that, the Arctic Circle. We are warmed by the neverending flow of booze and having our ears sensually assaulted by 'Blooddrunk' - the pounding new melodic thrasher that the band have just recorded. So much drink has been taken however, that your humble correspondent has agreed to do something quite stupid: we are to interview this bunch of hairy Finns in a boiling hot sauna.
At first it seems like a good idea, but we fail to notice that the majority of journalists from across Europe, Scandinavia and North and South America who are also here have politely refused the chance to get inside a wooden coffin with a black metal band and get heated up to the surface temperature of the sun. Guitarist Roope Latvalla, who is already so drunk he can barely talk, relays the rules: "Take your clothes off! Get in the sauna! Drink some fucking beer!" Band members roar as they pour lager onto the heater, causing scalding hot clouds of alcohol to fill up the birch-panelled capsule of near-certain heart attack. "It isn't hot enough until it feels like your teeth are melting," explains Roope. When we are as red as lobsters, bassist Henkka Seppälä chooses to reveal that now it is time to jump in the sea. The Baltic sea. At night time. In November.
We march down to the shore. "Hang on," we say to Henkka. "Isn't this dangerous?" He looks at us like we're idiots. "Of course it's fucking dangerous!" is his reply. We all leap into the choppy black waters and, amid all the growling Viking roars emanating from the band including frontman Alexi Laiho, keyboardist Janne Warman and drummer Jaska Raatikainen, there is a high-pitched squeal. Ah yes, they've just dropped Hammer, squeaking like a giddy pig, into an ocean that resembles a gargantuan swimming pool full of ice cubes. A jagged adrenaline rush powers us out of the waves but, just as we're walking past the huge restaurant where the world's metal press are sitting watching this undignified spectacle unfold, a gust of wind blows our towel off, leaving us naked. Everyone gets an eyeful. Well, we say an eyeful but we've just come out of the Baltic Sea and it is very, very cold ...
Walking back along the shore to the wooden hut, Henkka explains that the sauna is still an essential ingredient in day-to-day life in Finland and that nearly every home has one.
"Most Finnish people have two a week. It is kind of good for getting over a hangover but it is quite extreme and down to how hot you can let it go. If you have it over 120 degrees it can be quite bad for your heart. It isn't frowned upon to have sex in a sauna but it is so exhausting it is almos impossible."
Back in the heated cabin, more beers are handed out and everyone smiles and glows in the way that people who are no longer in the Baltic Sea tend to. And well should they feel confident and relaxed. The album, which is Bodom at their heaviest, is also one of their best to date. It was recorded in a remote studio in a forest in a village called Hollola, which offered them the kind of seclusion they need to work. Not just from the normal stuff like "girlfriends and paying bills" but a darker tranquility offered by the wilds of Finland. Henkka claims that the actual process of writing and recording the album was exactly the same as they always rely on: "We don't take long. We don't turn up to the studio with much prepared." It is this dark-ops, straight in/straight out attitude that is the key to Bodom's success - if nearly any other band recorded like they did they'd be called lo-fi, but as it is the band are so preternaturally proficient that even this collection of songs that they fired straight through in a few weeks in a shed end up sounding like they were gestated over a thousand years on a space station. This scientific primitivist approach at once captures a punkish DIY spirit of rage and intensity but is also slick enough to please the most technically minded of metalheads. So there was no conscious decision to back away from the poppier glam elements of 'Are You Dead Yet?' but this, nonetheless, is what's happened. Instead we have the aurora borealis polychromatic splash of 'Blooddrunk' which gallops along on an unusual triplets-based time signature. Elsewhere on 'Roadkill Morning', lyrical content is matched awesomely by musical texture on this song about having the hangover from hell and which, thankfully, is a bit like being hit by a truck when you listen to it really loud. Its slightly old-school NWOBHM/prog metal feel probably comes from the fact that it is two tracks that have been cut and shunted together to form a dangerous and unstoppable hotrod of a song. The most interesting thing about the album, however, is the contradictory fact that now that the band are happier and have dealt with their demons (mainly), they are ready to tackle some very serious subject matter: Alexi's suicidal tendencies, his mental illness, his self-harm and his incarceration in a psychiatric hospital.
All over Finland, snow is falling. Into the battleship-grey waters of the Baltic, over the empty streets and deserted parks, over the giant Sibelius monument. It feels like Children of Bodom are the only people to have ventured out tonight. And they may well be chatty and friendly but it's hard not to mention the elephant in the sauna: this is an album born of sadness and despair. And maybe that is a sadness and despair unique to the band or maybe it is the more general air of melancholy and despression that many people from Finland share. Henkka sighs.
"You could say that but, compared to many other countries, Finnish people are not so much melancholy as laid back, quiet and maybe a little more serious."
But the truth of the matter is that melancholy, depression and sadness have been inescapable for Children of Bodom from the outset.The group formed at the height of grunge in 1993 in the city of Espoo, a small town with only a passing relationship with sunlight. They played a melodic breed of black metal infused with a strong sense for NWOBHM, power metal and neo-classical. The Finnish press coined the term 'Tuonela' for this offshoot of BM, which owes a debt to the dramatic composer from Helsinki, Jean Sibelius. In 1997, they attracted the attention of Spinefarm Records (with whom they are still signed). Their name refers to the densely forested area around Lake Bodom and has a deep resonance for the country because it is the site of one of their most notorious unsolved murders.
The band's debut album, 'Something Wild', finally came out in 1998 and despite the fact there was some criticism of their neo-classical approach in some quarters, it seemed that finally Children of Bodom's star was in the ascendant. But behind closed doors things were far from fine. Frontman and gifted guitarist Alexi 'Wildchild' Laiho was struggling with depression, violent mood swings and had taken to cutting himself in order to help him overcome the mental turmoil. Alexi, a friendly and relaxed yet still quite intense man, is reticent about discussing his problems. It is, to borrow a grim analogy, like getting blood out of a stone, but he admits that, given that it is the theme of the new album, he does need to get a few things off his chest. He speaks in a very calm, quiet voice, which is at odds with his onstage persona and with the terrible things he is telling us.
"I've always sufferd with depression. Especially when I was younger, say 10 or so years ago, I was pretty fucked in the head. I was just ... I don't know. I was depressed and suicidal. I was angry about everything. I hadn't felt despression as a child. My childhood was OK, but by the time I was about 17 I was pretty fucked in the head."
Sometimes when people are younger they haven't even heard of self-harm, they don't realise that other people do it, we suggest, but he dismisses this idea out of hand.
"Well, I used to cut myself and I was aware of what I was doing. I don't do that shit anymore but I did used to do that shit when I was 17 and 18. But now, looking back, it looks like the stupidest thing ever, but back in the day I just didn't care. I mean if I'd have cut a tendon I wouldn't be sitting here now because I wouldn't be able to play guitar, or if I had hit a vein ..."
If you were suicidal, was cutting yourself a way of releasing the pressure, getting the suicidal thoughts out of your head, or was it leading up to a suicide bid?
He pauses for an interminably long time.
"I genuinely wished I was dead. For example, when I was in the car, I would wish that I'd crash and die. One time - and I guess it could have been a cry-for-help suicide attempt - I popped a load of pills and drank a bottle of whiskey. Obviously I didn't die but I was taken to a psychiatric hospital and had my stomach pumped. At least I guess so. I don't really remember that much because I was so out of it, so heavily sedated."
At what point did you realise that you had to get help otherwise something serious - probably death - was going to happen?
"Well at one point I had a complete fucking nervous breakdown. I was screaming and crying, having a total fit. I don't know what it was but I just had to get that feeling out of me. I knew I just didn't want to feel like that ever again. I had to get taken to a psychiatric hospital again. It was a pretty frightening experience. When I woke up there it was terrifying. It isn't anything creepy like in the movies, but it was scary waking up among these actually insane people, of all ages, screaming and shouting, who were in a much worse way than me. I was still kind of aware of what was going on and these people didn't have a fucking clue what was going on. That was when I knew I had to get out of there and not go back. I just didn't want to feel like that again. Well, it took a long time for me to feel OK for the first time. But that was what I wanted and there was no other way.
Although no one would ever claim that being in a touring rock band is an extremely hard job, like being a frontline soldier or a junior doctor in an A&E department, it's still a notoriously stressfull occupation. This is why the business throws up so many casualties. The road to success is littered with the gravestones of the young.
Alexi admits that it was pressure due to the group becoming more and more successful that was making him consider taking his own life, but says that at the same time it was the thing that saved him.
"The band was causing the pressure but it was also pretty much the only thing that kept me going. It did a lot of good for me. You know, when I was at my worst, at my lowest, that was when the really good things started to happen to me and to the band and that had a big effect on how I was feeling."
And while it would be wrong to say that Alexi is now the life and soul of the party, it is obvious that he is not just better but he can even laugh about the past.
"Yeah, I guess I'm pretty much better now," he pauses before laughing. "Well, I would say so anyway. I'm not sure if anyone else thinks so!"
Later on in the evening, Henkka is keen to give an outsider's perspective on the singer's troubles that nearly ended the band before they had gotten anywhere.
"I only realised he was depressed when I realised he was self-harming. When I saw his cuts. But at first I didn't take it so seriously; I thought it was more like an image thing. You know how it is, I just thought it was something to do with the fact that he was going through the black metal phase. Everyone was really serious back then. Everyone was really dark and you were not allowed to laugh even. And you could only listen to the violence of early Darkthrone. But then after we did the first album and we were supposed to do some shows and that was the first time that I heard that he had to go to hospital to be taken care of because of his mental health issues. It was obviously a very deep depression. Then it got better bit by bit. Back then he was very ... I wouldn't say violent but very aggressive, and suffering from very violent mood swings. It was difficult sometimes to deal with him. But since he was taken into hospital and taken care of he has been getting better all the time and he is a totally different person nowdays to the one he was over 10 years ago.
When asked if he thought that Alexi getting sectioned into a mental hospital was it for the band, he agrees emphatically.
"Yes. Yes, it was very serious. That was our first album and we'd done a few smaller shows but we had our first big show coming up and it was a big thing for us and we had been waiting for it. But then we heard that we couldn't do it because Alexi had been taken into hospital. Back then it was a catastrophe for us. We thought, 'If it's like this now, what will it be like in the future?' But in the end it all turned out well. The band was so close to splitting up just before we got the record deal as well. He said so many times, 'Sorry guys. We can't keep on doing it any more. I am just too exhausted and just too frustrated with it. We have to quit this thing and do something else."
And we should be thankful that Alexi had the support and care that he needed because it goes without saying that few outside of Finland would ever have got to hear of them. Now they are on their sixth studio album, which looks set to make them a regular fixture on the festival circuit and household names. 'Blooddrunk' is their most punishing album to date, packed full of dense riffology and laser-guided shredding, but more importantly, to the band themselves it contains a positive message about Alexi's former mental health issues.
"It's a very tricky question," he admits. "I just really want to emphasise the fact that I was very young and very crazy. I don't want to preach, but there are other ways to vent your bad feelings. I just wanted to say that you don't have to cut yourself and you don't have to go out and hit people with a baseball bat. You can get the same release through heavy metal."
And with that we shower and get dressed, getting ready for a night out on the town visiting the metal bars of Helsinki - or Hell Drinky as it has been rechristened - and to celebrate Finnish Independence and a new, happier dawn for Children of Bodom.
They say that people like to slake their thirst on alcohol brewed in countries they have defeated. And on Independence Day, celebrating Finland's freedom from their Russian oppressors, Children of Bodom and Hammer are certainly putting away enough vodka to sink the Battleship Potemkin. The venue is an impressive glass-fronted restaurant in Helsinki overlooking the Baltic Sea and, beyond that, the Arctic Circle. We are warmed by the neverending flow of booze and having our ears sensually assaulted by 'Blooddrunk' - the pounding new melodic thrasher that the band have just recorded. So much drink has been taken however, that your humble correspondent has agreed to do something quite stupid: we are to interview this bunch of hairy Finns in a boiling hot sauna.
At first it seems like a good idea, but we fail to notice that the majority of journalists from across Europe, Scandinavia and North and South America who are also here have politely refused the chance to get inside a wooden coffin with a black metal band and get heated up to the surface temperature of the sun. Guitarist Roope Latvalla, who is already so drunk he can barely talk, relays the rules: "Take your clothes off! Get in the sauna! Drink some fucking beer!" Band members roar as they pour lager onto the heater, causing scalding hot clouds of alcohol to fill up the birch-panelled capsule of near-certain heart attack. "It isn't hot enough until it feels like your teeth are melting," explains Roope. When we are as red as lobsters, bassist Henkka Seppälä chooses to reveal that now it is time to jump in the sea. The Baltic sea. At night time. In November.
We march down to the shore. "Hang on," we say to Henkka. "Isn't this dangerous?" He looks at us like we're idiots. "Of course it's fucking dangerous!" is his reply. We all leap into the choppy black waters and, amid all the growling Viking roars emanating from the band including frontman Alexi Laiho, keyboardist Janne Warman and drummer Jaska Raatikainen, there is a high-pitched squeal. Ah yes, they've just dropped Hammer, squeaking like a giddy pig, into an ocean that resembles a gargantuan swimming pool full of ice cubes. A jagged adrenaline rush powers us out of the waves but, just as we're walking past the huge restaurant where the world's metal press are sitting watching this undignified spectacle unfold, a gust of wind blows our towel off, leaving us naked. Everyone gets an eyeful. Well, we say an eyeful but we've just come out of the Baltic Sea and it is very, very cold ...
Walking back along the shore to the wooden hut, Henkka explains that the sauna is still an essential ingredient in day-to-day life in Finland and that nearly every home has one.
"Most Finnish people have two a week. It is kind of good for getting over a hangover but it is quite extreme and down to how hot you can let it go. If you have it over 120 degrees it can be quite bad for your heart. It isn't frowned upon to have sex in a sauna but it is so exhausting it is almos impossible."
Back in the heated cabin, more beers are handed out and everyone smiles and glows in the way that people who are no longer in the Baltic Sea tend to. And well should they feel confident and relaxed. The album, which is Bodom at their heaviest, is also one of their best to date. It was recorded in a remote studio in a forest in a village called Hollola, which offered them the kind of seclusion they need to work. Not just from the normal stuff like "girlfriends and paying bills" but a darker tranquility offered by the wilds of Finland. Henkka claims that the actual process of writing and recording the album was exactly the same as they always rely on: "We don't take long. We don't turn up to the studio with much prepared." It is this dark-ops, straight in/straight out attitude that is the key to Bodom's success - if nearly any other band recorded like they did they'd be called lo-fi, but as it is the band are so preternaturally proficient that even this collection of songs that they fired straight through in a few weeks in a shed end up sounding like they were gestated over a thousand years on a space station. This scientific primitivist approach at once captures a punkish DIY spirit of rage and intensity but is also slick enough to please the most technically minded of metalheads. So there was no conscious decision to back away from the poppier glam elements of 'Are You Dead Yet?' but this, nonetheless, is what's happened. Instead we have the aurora borealis polychromatic splash of 'Blooddrunk' which gallops along on an unusual triplets-based time signature. Elsewhere on 'Roadkill Morning', lyrical content is matched awesomely by musical texture on this song about having the hangover from hell and which, thankfully, is a bit like being hit by a truck when you listen to it really loud. Its slightly old-school NWOBHM/prog metal feel probably comes from the fact that it is two tracks that have been cut and shunted together to form a dangerous and unstoppable hotrod of a song. The most interesting thing about the album, however, is the contradictory fact that now that the band are happier and have dealt with their demons (mainly), they are ready to tackle some very serious subject matter: Alexi's suicidal tendencies, his mental illness, his self-harm and his incarceration in a psychiatric hospital.
All over Finland, snow is falling. Into the battleship-grey waters of the Baltic, over the empty streets and deserted parks, over the giant Sibelius monument. It feels like Children of Bodom are the only people to have ventured out tonight. And they may well be chatty and friendly but it's hard not to mention the elephant in the sauna: this is an album born of sadness and despair. And maybe that is a sadness and despair unique to the band or maybe it is the more general air of melancholy and despression that many people from Finland share. Henkka sighs.
"You could say that but, compared to many other countries, Finnish people are not so much melancholy as laid back, quiet and maybe a little more serious."
But the truth of the matter is that melancholy, depression and sadness have been inescapable for Children of Bodom from the outset.The group formed at the height of grunge in 1993 in the city of Espoo, a small town with only a passing relationship with sunlight. They played a melodic breed of black metal infused with a strong sense for NWOBHM, power metal and neo-classical. The Finnish press coined the term 'Tuonela' for this offshoot of BM, which owes a debt to the dramatic composer from Helsinki, Jean Sibelius. In 1997, they attracted the attention of Spinefarm Records (with whom they are still signed). Their name refers to the densely forested area around Lake Bodom and has a deep resonance for the country because it is the site of one of their most notorious unsolved murders.
The band's debut album, 'Something Wild', finally came out in 1998 and despite the fact there was some criticism of their neo-classical approach in some quarters, it seemed that finally Children of Bodom's star was in the ascendant. But behind closed doors things were far from fine. Frontman and gifted guitarist Alexi 'Wildchild' Laiho was struggling with depression, violent mood swings and had taken to cutting himself in order to help him overcome the mental turmoil. Alexi, a friendly and relaxed yet still quite intense man, is reticent about discussing his problems. It is, to borrow a grim analogy, like getting blood out of a stone, but he admits that, given that it is the theme of the new album, he does need to get a few things off his chest. He speaks in a very calm, quiet voice, which is at odds with his onstage persona and with the terrible things he is telling us.
"I've always sufferd with depression. Especially when I was younger, say 10 or so years ago, I was pretty fucked in the head. I was just ... I don't know. I was depressed and suicidal. I was angry about everything. I hadn't felt despression as a child. My childhood was OK, but by the time I was about 17 I was pretty fucked in the head."
Sometimes when people are younger they haven't even heard of self-harm, they don't realise that other people do it, we suggest, but he dismisses this idea out of hand.
"Well, I used to cut myself and I was aware of what I was doing. I don't do that shit anymore but I did used to do that shit when I was 17 and 18. But now, looking back, it looks like the stupidest thing ever, but back in the day I just didn't care. I mean if I'd have cut a tendon I wouldn't be sitting here now because I wouldn't be able to play guitar, or if I had hit a vein ..."
If you were suicidal, was cutting yourself a way of releasing the pressure, getting the suicidal thoughts out of your head, or was it leading up to a suicide bid?
He pauses for an interminably long time.
"I genuinely wished I was dead. For example, when I was in the car, I would wish that I'd crash and die. One time - and I guess it could have been a cry-for-help suicide attempt - I popped a load of pills and drank a bottle of whiskey. Obviously I didn't die but I was taken to a psychiatric hospital and had my stomach pumped. At least I guess so. I don't really remember that much because I was so out of it, so heavily sedated."
At what point did you realise that you had to get help otherwise something serious - probably death - was going to happen?
"Well at one point I had a complete fucking nervous breakdown. I was screaming and crying, having a total fit. I don't know what it was but I just had to get that feeling out of me. I knew I just didn't want to feel like that ever again. I had to get taken to a psychiatric hospital again. It was a pretty frightening experience. When I woke up there it was terrifying. It isn't anything creepy like in the movies, but it was scary waking up among these actually insane people, of all ages, screaming and shouting, who were in a much worse way than me. I was still kind of aware of what was going on and these people didn't have a fucking clue what was going on. That was when I knew I had to get out of there and not go back. I just didn't want to feel like that again. Well, it took a long time for me to feel OK for the first time. But that was what I wanted and there was no other way.
Although no one would ever claim that being in a touring rock band is an extremely hard job, like being a frontline soldier or a junior doctor in an A&E department, it's still a notoriously stressfull occupation. This is why the business throws up so many casualties. The road to success is littered with the gravestones of the young.
Alexi admits that it was pressure due to the group becoming more and more successful that was making him consider taking his own life, but says that at the same time it was the thing that saved him.
"The band was causing the pressure but it was also pretty much the only thing that kept me going. It did a lot of good for me. You know, when I was at my worst, at my lowest, that was when the really good things started to happen to me and to the band and that had a big effect on how I was feeling."
And while it would be wrong to say that Alexi is now the life and soul of the party, it is obvious that he is not just better but he can even laugh about the past.
"Yeah, I guess I'm pretty much better now," he pauses before laughing. "Well, I would say so anyway. I'm not sure if anyone else thinks so!"
Later on in the evening, Henkka is keen to give an outsider's perspective on the singer's troubles that nearly ended the band before they had gotten anywhere.
"I only realised he was depressed when I realised he was self-harming. When I saw his cuts. But at first I didn't take it so seriously; I thought it was more like an image thing. You know how it is, I just thought it was something to do with the fact that he was going through the black metal phase. Everyone was really serious back then. Everyone was really dark and you were not allowed to laugh even. And you could only listen to the violence of early Darkthrone. But then after we did the first album and we were supposed to do some shows and that was the first time that I heard that he had to go to hospital to be taken care of because of his mental health issues. It was obviously a very deep depression. Then it got better bit by bit. Back then he was very ... I wouldn't say violent but very aggressive, and suffering from very violent mood swings. It was difficult sometimes to deal with him. But since he was taken into hospital and taken care of he has been getting better all the time and he is a totally different person nowdays to the one he was over 10 years ago.
When asked if he thought that Alexi getting sectioned into a mental hospital was it for the band, he agrees emphatically.
"Yes. Yes, it was very serious. That was our first album and we'd done a few smaller shows but we had our first big show coming up and it was a big thing for us and we had been waiting for it. But then we heard that we couldn't do it because Alexi had been taken into hospital. Back then it was a catastrophe for us. We thought, 'If it's like this now, what will it be like in the future?' But in the end it all turned out well. The band was so close to splitting up just before we got the record deal as well. He said so many times, 'Sorry guys. We can't keep on doing it any more. I am just too exhausted and just too frustrated with it. We have to quit this thing and do something else."
And we should be thankful that Alexi had the support and care that he needed because it goes without saying that few outside of Finland would ever have got to hear of them. Now they are on their sixth studio album, which looks set to make them a regular fixture on the festival circuit and household names. 'Blooddrunk' is their most punishing album to date, packed full of dense riffology and laser-guided shredding, but more importantly, to the band themselves it contains a positive message about Alexi's former mental health issues.
"It's a very tricky question," he admits. "I just really want to emphasise the fact that I was very young and very crazy. I don't want to preach, but there are other ways to vent your bad feelings. I just wanted to say that you don't have to cut yourself and you don't have to go out and hit people with a baseball bat. You can get the same release through heavy metal."
And with that we shower and get dressed, getting ready for a night out on the town visiting the metal bars of Helsinki - or Hell Drinky as it has been rechristened - and to celebrate Finnish Independence and a new, happier dawn for Children of Bodom.
Lanterns
1 girl in her cups
sleeper666
MetalMutha
^ It sure was. Alexi has certainly been through some shit - good to know he feels better about things now
children of COB
Deadnight Drinker
