The Black Metal outfit Children Of Bodom formed in Espoo, Finland in 1993;
named in reference to one of the most notorious mass-murders in Scandinavian history.
The group was originally founded by singer/guitarist Alexi Laiho and drummer Jaska Raatikainen, with subsequent roster additions including guitarist Alexander "Ale" Kuoppala, bassist Henkka Seppälä and keyboardist Janne Warman. Children Of Bodom's debyut album, "Something Wild", was released in the U.S in 1998; "Hatebreeder" followed a year later and "Follow The Reaper" appeared in early 2001.
History (long version)
They are absolutely not your standard dose of Scandinavian Black/Death metal, this is something else, a soundtrack for the unsolved, eerie murders of this world!!!
Children Of Bodom hail from Espoo, Finland, and were originally formed under a different name during the spring of 1993. During the first few years the band made a couple of demos and played some gigs around the Helsinki area. The musical style of the band has gone through a lot of changes during the first few years. They started as a death/trash band, but after a while they started to play their current black/death with classic heavy metal influences. This young Finnish group has taken it's name from one of the biggest murder mysteries in the history of Finnish crime, "the Murders at the lake Bodom", which is located in the south of Finland, near Helsinki. after their debut album "Something Wild" was released in Finland (November 1997), things started to happen to the band pretty fast. They supported DIMMU BORGIR at the band's Helsinki show in November and were hailed as the new kings of Finnish underground metal by the press.
Licensing deal with Nuclear Blast for central Europe was inked quickly and later the debut album was also released in Japan and Thailand.
February-99 gave us their second album "Hatebreeder".
Their music had found it's true shape: Hatebreeder is faster, heavier and more
versatile than Something Wild. Pre-Hatebreeder single Downfall (which also included the cover song "No Commands" from the Finnish trash metal pioneers, Stone)went gold and ruled the Finnish charts.
Summer-99 Chilrden went by touring Finland and Europe. In June they also did three sold out gigs in Japan with Dark Tranquillity and Sinergy and recorded the ultimate live cd "Tokyo Warhearts", which gives an excellent image of their intensity onstage! if you think it's way too early to release a live cd after just two studio albums, Tokyo Warhearts proves you Wrong! "Warhearts" came out in Europe in October and all the 20000 copies of this A5-digibook with photocards was almost immediately sold out. No re-pressings, sorry...
Their latest single "Hate Me!" went #1 at the Finnish charts and-suprise, suprise!-sold gold in Finland in just couple of weeks. Now the single have sold more than 10000 copies-and that means PLATINUM!!!!
Children have finished their studio sessions at Peter Tägtgren's Abyss Studio and the Third album "Follow The Reaper" was released in Finland 30.10.2000.
Taken from Spinefarm's Children Of Bodom site.