One thing is it's authentic to draw stuff to art from your own experiences, but I guess with Bodom it became too much about Alexi at some point, maybe it irritates the rest of the band. Maybe take a healthy distance to that so it isn't all drawn from the composer's personal life, you can alter it to something more symbolic while still doing it with blood. I mean AYDY was heavily inspired by Alexi's careless partying, Blooddrunk about female grudges, Halo of Blood about suicided friends, IWC about Alexi's anxiety in silence. I think the albums Hatebreeder and Follow the Reaper had it just right; you could tell the composer vented his haunting feelings into the art, but it was still art first. This is vague of course and only an educated fan would know, but when it gets too close and personal there's some beauty lost from the art making process on some unconscious level. There is also darkness and disturbing things about life that touch all of us and is easily relatable, but isn't necessarily the mental baggage of one person disguised as art. Don't get me wrong, the band still has to be professional to understand the composion power is primarily Alexi's, but art in itself becomes better when you do it for the art itself rather than for a testimony of your suffering. Maybe Alexi meant the lyrics, and that's where it should be personal, but we've come to the point when the albums of COB have a legacy of their own and all effort should be put into making another COB masterpiece and forgetting everything personal. They need to respect the fact that Bodom's ultimate style is in songs like Warheart, and not let anything get in the way of duplicating that atmosphere (even if it's disturbing chemistry between band members of course). Don't let anything get in the way. At first you think your art has to be written with blood to be great, but then once it becomes great and original in itself you can distance your own experiences from it and think what serves the art project purely, this also means sacking all unnecessary and impure influences you feel would serve the art when in reality it's leading it off the rail. Maybe they're back on track now since there was the return to old school songs and no clash between guitarists now. Something didn't work before and I'm sorry to say but fans care about the art, not who was treated worse. I guess Finnish guys think things just get worse if you try to treat them by talking, so they just split. In this land distance between neighbours was so big it was safer to cut connections rather than deal with bad blood, whereas in the south you had to get along with your close neighbours so they're more mouthful about everything.
