Children of Bodom/ Trivium/ Amon Amarth

As another package tour sets across the States with the more extreme sounds of today's metal we see this bill featuring Children of Bodom , one of the more successful from the underground movement that seems to be rather popular these days. There is definitely an audience out there for the highly angry, melody free, hostility fueled Metal that makes up most of the bill for Ozzfest . Given the lineup that included the Death Metal growls of openers Amon Amarth to the more Metalcore sounds of Trivium , headliners Children have more in common with say the Euro Power Metal genre as they combine classical keyboards with melodic twin guitar leads. The crowd enjoyed the range of sounds by all three bands.

Trivium's style is a prime example of what Heavy Metal has evolved into for today's younger listeners. The music is aggressive mixing speed with the guitar riffing similar to Pantera and melody found in the guitar harmonies and the chorus' that uses a cleaner voice. Verses are screamed with a lot of angst, a piece to this style that is a given. As far as performers, lead singer/guitarist Matthew carries the band with a lot of energy and attitude while stirring up the audience with banter in between songs and throwing his fist up in the air. Both he and Corey on second guitar were playing Dimebag Darrel signature guitars and even payed tribute to the late guitar hero by playing part of the Pantera songs “Domination” and “Walk”. The crowd absolutely loved this with a circle pit to boot.

Children of Bodom have been on a few different tour runs throughout the States over the past few years as support for Iced Earth and Dimmu Borgir , and receiving extremely well responses for both. I knew it was a matter of time before these guys were headlining, especially after seeing the crowd supporting them with Iced Earth.

Guitarist/lead singer Alexi is the driving musical man behind the band and their melodic Speed Metal. Even though the voice is very rough with no areas of melody, the dual guitar harmonies and cascading keyboards gives Children a distinctive sound. Out supporting their successful new disc “Are You Dead Yet? ”, they opened with “Living Dead Beat” while also including the catchy riff driven first single/ video “In Your Face”. Both were well received by the crowd as with new ads to the set like “Follow the Reaper” off the said disc which I was very happy was included. Still I was hoping that either one of “Bed of Razors” and “Black Widow” off ‘ Hatebreeder ” would have made it to the set since they allowed fans to vote on what was played. Constant movement on stage by the members as it was difficult to get good pictures, but I can't complain about that because who wants to see a band that's lawn furniture?

Setlist :
Living Dead Beat
Sixpounder
Silent Night, Bodom Night
Hate Me!
In Your Face
Angels Don't Die
Follow the Reaper
Needled 24/7
Keyboard and Guitar solos
We're Not Gonna ' Fall
Hatecrew Deathroll
Are You Dead Yet?
Chokehold
Everytime I Die
Downfall