Children of Bodom
In Your Face

For the series "Skeletons in the Closet," here are the Children of Bodom, true champions of the teenage metalhead of the past decade.

In the mid-2000s, their style of play needed a jolt, the dreaded crossover between melodic death and power metal drenched in keyboards and with a thousand neoclassical scales going up and down, the product of an ideal yet abominable pairing between In Flames and Stratovarius, is at a standstill.

Thus comes a new single, where the usual little man with the scythe tries to punch us in the face, "In Your Face" yeah!, while only on the album cover he will show his terrible hidden face. The restyling, apart from the dark colors with which the reaper of damned souls presents himself, consists of abundant infusions of pantera-like riffs, in short, thrash that kicks but is modern, and shades leaning towards industrial; of course, the tamarroni guitar and keyboard solos alternated cannot disappear for any reason. All this is thrown in the listener's face, "In Your Face" yeah!, for which there is even a censored version because apparently, the lyrics contain nasty words that the kids better not hear pronounced by the sprightly Alexi's scream/growl.

However, all this is not interesting at all, the only thing that deserves attention is the b-side: a fabulous cover of Britney Spears! "Oops I Did It Again," I don't know the lyrics but every time I imagine tender Britney admitting she did some naughtiness once again, besides bringing back memories of an old schoolmate who was a bit gay and spent hundreds of euros on posters and various accessories portraying the admirable singer. One of these posters, hung in class, was then set on fire during the high school's Christmas party.

The fact remains that, after shouting something in Finnish, Alexi spits on the ground, gathering all the phlegm he has in his body, and it is at this point that the blasphemy begins. A young session player pretends to be Britney and duets with Laiho in a couple of yeeh yeeh, after which the towering guitars kick in a whirlwind of metalesque pop that continues with a furious slowdown, which makes it feel very much like a bad group, indeed much more than a bad group, before the arrival of the astonishing final guitar solos. Actually, more than astonishing!

This is absolutely the undisputed pinnacle of the production of the children of Lake Bodom, which says a lot about the rest, but oh well…

Long live Britney!
Long live Alexi!