Oh my god, what. My jaw just hit the floor and I haven't read the article yet, what the fuck dude. Can't be real.

This is absolutely horrible. I loved COB in high school and I was in awe of Alexi creating so many ripping solos with that neo classical feel, his tremolo dives and the whole goth fashion aesthetic combined with melodic death metal was amazing to me. I stopped listening to them in around 2012 and only just got back into their stuff about two months ago, I've being going back through Hate Crew Deathroll, FTR, Something Wild and AYDY?. I always though this guy was just a sick (in a good way) musician that was super talented, and I was bummed to see the falling out with Roope who is another amazing guitarist and piece of their history.

I didn't expect to read this tonight, I'm absolutely shocked and he has left far too soon. 41 is way to young to die.

If I can take anything away from this unexpected event, its to appreciate people while they are around and don't wait to accomplish your goals because you can easily be gone sooner than you think.

Sometimes it's not immediately clear what the cause of death is (particularly when there's multiple health issues that may have played a role). Sometimes the cause of death may change the way people think of someone (mainly suicide, OD and euthanasia, plus some of the more unusual deaths like erotic auto-asphyxiation and such) and family/loved ones want to avoid that. Sometimes there's legal considerations (mainly with potential violent deaths, not so much illness-and-adjacent deaths).

like for many others here, bodom had a hand in my formative years - the first cd i ever owned (as opposed to c-cassettes), a metal compilation, had deadnight warrior on it, and unlike most people who seem to cite follow, for me the debut was always by far the best, and has been the only one i might occasionally listen to for ages

Terrible news and way too young, only a couple years younger than me.

I got into CoB ~20 years ago when looking for more underground bands and I came across "Follow the Reaper". RIP Alexi.

Yeah, I guess that's sensible.

I don't know, Laiho looked pretty healthy at a distance. I think it was suicide or one of those erotic thingies.

Unless he was hit in the head by an axe. You guys don't think being hit in the head with an axe by lake Bodom classifies as health problem, do you? Just a passing thought...

Children of Bodom was the first metal band I ever saw live. They were the gateway into extreme metal for me. RIP Alexi.

What the fuuuuuck, i can't believe it too.
I loved COB and Sinergy at high school, he add a lot to melodeath.
Way too young, RIP Alexis.

What the hell are you saying?



Could you please stop saying disrespectful and dumb shit please? The man just passed away and you have absolutely zero idea what the cause of death was.

Not to mention that the family of someone who just passed away owes absolutely no kind of explanation to the public. They will come out and say what happened when they feel good enough to do it, or official reports will give us more details. Until then, show some respect.

Speculating cause of death (and even seeming annoyed at not knowing the reason?) really isn't helpful or even worthwhile. Especially since Alexi is the kind of dude where you could roll a d20 to guess the cause and all twenty possible answers would be plausible. Best to just not worry about it and if we learn, we learn.

Anyway, it seems like a lot of metal fans around my age have a similar experience with Bodom and I'm no different. They were integral to my development as a metalhead and one of the "gateway drugs" so to speak since they were really melodic, catchy, and accessible while still helping me get acclimated to harsh, indecipherable vocals and absurdly over the top theatrics. Those first four albums are truly special and I'd still to this day put Hatebreeder and Follow the Reaper in the top ten of their respective decades. There was basically nothing like it at the time and they helped solidify and popularize an entire genre and not many musicians can truly claim such a thing, and Alexi wrote pretty much everything and never seemed to turn down the spotlight so, despite Wirman being the co-headliner in the band, he gets most of the credit. He'd done a lot to salvage the band's reputation with old fans like me with Halo of Blood and Hexed, so it's a real bummer that he died before really getting the new iteration of the band going. Wild to think he was 41 when he died yet he's been releasing material for nearly thirty damn years. Easy to forget that he was 15 when the first Inearthed demo came out and was like 17 when Something Wild was recorded. I would've fuckin killed to write a song as good as Kissing the Shadows when I was 20.

Been listening to that classic run for the first time in a while and it really does hold up beyond my own nostalgia. Those second and third albums really are something special.

It's too sad, the first 4 albums accompanied me in my adolescence, it was my gateway to more extreme sounds ... I am 28 years old and I would dare to say that most of my generation in metal was influenced by it, ago I stopped following him for many years, I didn't like what he followed in his career, but I respect him a lot. I leave an immense legacy
ps: the work with impaled nazarene was very good too.

For some reason I hated CoB when I was discovering extreme metal - I guess I was more interested in "underground" stuff (Napalm Death, Carcass, Lord Gore, etc.) and found them a bit too mainstream as they were all over Headbanger's Ball, Ozzfest lineups etc by that point... It wasn't until many years later when I found Hatebreeder for cheap and picked it up out of curiosity - and found it really, really damn good, even as someone who usually isn't into much of that kind of power metal-tinged melodeath.

Even with the rumors of his health issues over the years, it still comes as a shock. It's of course a shame he passed so young but a silver lining is the huge musical legacy he left behind. 10 albums from CoB and even more with his other projects, nothing to sneeze at...he sure kept himself busy. It's definitely going to be surreal when the Bodom After Midnight stuff finally sees the light of day even if it's only a few songs.

Are you really trolling on a thread about someone passing? You know you can choose not to be a dick, right?

Also, he was clearly ill, even from a distance, so best case scenario, you're factually wrong. I don't even stay close to the scene but last time I saw CoB live (like a bit over one year ago), he was skeletal, which was obvious even from afar.

Couldn't have said this better!

Also I was reading on Reddit and someone pointed out that 'Kissing the Shadows' was a filler song because they had studio time left over (source from an old fan site). Not sure how true it is but it's absolute classic and blows my mind he was only 20 at the time.

I think it's believable: At The Gates did a similar thing with Blinded By Fear, and we all know how it turned out

First song I've ever heard from COB was Are You Dead Yet? Hated it.
Then they made me check out the earlier stuff. Was impressed but I was always a Kalmah guy. But man, 2021 is off to a shitty start. Always respected Alexi, guess Ill have to give Hatebreeder another spin.

Seems true. He repeated it in several interviews. Composed the song in less than an hour or so. I don't know what that means. I guess he wrote the few riffs that make the first half of the song. The second half is filled with crazy good solos. Don't know how long did it take him to perfect or improvise that kind of solos before recording the final iteration. Awesome job.

The fact that Laiho passed away at 41 and that he was so extremely inspiring to so many of us who are about 30 years old today is a true testament to just how amazing he was and how young he started writing and recording amazing music. Something Wild was released when Laiho was just 18 (or 19?) and it's an absolute classic! Lake Bodom, Red Light In My Eyes Part 1 and 2, Touch Like Angel Of Death are all amazing songs!

I don't doubt it, the song does have a bit of jam session vibe in the second half with all the solos. Sometimes people embellish so I tend to take things with a grain of salt at times.



It was the first I heard/read it. I didn't follow the band all that much to begin with but I love those first 4 records. So it was easy for me to miss this detail.

After losing Neil Peart, Eddie Van Halen in the same year it seems hardly stunning for me to see Alexi die as well to cap off a horrible 2020. Apparently he died last week and the news got out now. I saw them back in April 2019 in New York and he looked gaunt and somewhat subdued on stage. I figured given his heavy drinking he had liver issues and it looks like it may have been liver failure in the end. Time will tell.

Seeing his face on IG I thought initially there would be some Bodom After Midnight news, maybe a release date. Little did I know it would be his obituary. The breakup of COB is starting to come together for me. I believe the band knew Alexi was on borrowed time or close to it and they suggested to him to take some time off, recover and get treatment. Or just retire altogether. Alexi refused and wanted to keep chugging along, this is where I think the band meant "we don't see eye to eye with Alexi". So they ended COB as their ultimatum and Alexi said "fuck that, I keep going to the end" and formed BAM. Here we are in 2021 and he's dead.

Needless to say COB (as like with Rush, Type O Negative and Van Halen) are done. Alexi was the voice, guitar and songwriter for the band. He WAS the band. The remaining members can possible unite down the road and form something else. They might have to recruit a new vocalist, but they could do something in the future.

For me, 97-03 was their peak period. Halo Of Blood was a great return to form and Hexed was good too. So I'll give them that. What made Alexi's guitar playing and songwriting so unique was that he combined the catchy hooks of EVH with the neoclassical technicality of Yngwie at the same time. Really an amazing guitarist. I feel after Hate Crew, he got lazy with his riffs and lost some of his imagination during Are You Dead Yet all the way up to Halo Of Blood where he began to use black metal style riffing to rejuvinate his form again (which worked). All in all, died way too young and he had much more to give. RIP.

I wasn't aware of that. Sometimes things turn out that way. It's an insane song. When I want to restore my faith in mankind, I watch that dude's cover of Kissing the Shadows on YT. It's provides a moment of transcendence.

Its incredibly sad, 41 is no age at all, and he died in tragic circumstances plagued by bad health, i was a huge fan for many years and i couldn't stop thinking about it all yesterday and was really mourning for him. Thankfully I saw them live at least once! But i was really hoping I would get to see them again but that was never to be They didn't do so many extensive UK tours in recent years which didn't help, its crazy to think its almost ten years since the first and only time I saw them live and then he dies. It's a huge loss for metal, there will be a big hole left by him and will be worse off without him. He was mighty talented, his music will be with us forever even though he's no longer here. Did anyone here meet him? If so, share your memories! In dedication to his memory I am literally blasting their entire discography start to finish over the next 11 days or so, as thats the amount of albums they had, thank you Alexi for the brilliant music. R.I.P. 1979-2020.

Just to add to the conversation about his impressive career : there's about 1360 Bodom gigs listed on setlist.fm. They might miss some. For what it's worth, it's more than Nightwish, Stratovarius, Opeth, Soilwork, Arch Enemy, Dimmu Borgir, Cradle Of Filth....
Some bands have toured more than that. It's not a competition or anything, but Alexi was impressive by his will to keep up with that kind of very high-energy show that they gave and continue to tour almost non-stop some years. Not only Europe and America but about everywhere. Asia especially, very soon in their career.

Man, that's fucked up. I have great memories of getting big into Bodom back in high school, of seeing them as one of my first big metal shows in 2008 (Gigantour), and again at Brutal Assault 2010. I didn't keep up with them much after then, but they were a huge gateway band for me and lots of others my age, as this thread will attest. It's really crazy to think that Alexi was so young on those early Bodom records - what a fucking insane guitarist. Of course that brand of shreddy melodeath they helped to pioneer fell out of vogue over the years, but back in the early-mid 2000s they were just about as big as an extreme metal band could possibly get. Rest in peace.

I remember back in 1999 when I was 15 years old I used to buy unofficial tapes 2 in 1 in my small city in Kazakhstan. I was totally in black metal vein. One day I bought Emperor - IX Equilibrium and on the second side of the tape was recorded unknown band called Children of Bodom with album Hatebreeder. After dark and oppressive listening to Emperor' masterpiece I turned cassette and... My world was simply exploded. I never heard such mix of aggression, technicality and sincere fun... I listened to this album during one month every day, so much energy it gave to me. So as many of you I can say that COB was an important part of my youth especially because of Hatebreeder.
All these words mean that for me personally it's a big loss. Seems like when you're losing childhood' friend with whom you're not talking too much nowadays but all memories related to him are very bright and clean.

honestly, i wouldn't know about this site if it weren't for Alexi .. I was 13 in 2000 when I wanted something 'more'. The first song I heard by them was "Warheart". In my mind back then, I just thought he sounded like a troll. After checking out Follow the Reaper I became a huge fan. For probably the next 3 years I was obsessed with Alexi's writing/playing. Even though I didn't listen to them much in recent years, this one really hurts me. Was supposed to see them in Nashville in 2013, but unfortunately Alexi ended up in the hospital that day. RIP Alexi

I discovered them in 2001 and I remember in 2009 when he turned 30 I said to myself, "He's only 30?! It seems like he's been around forever!"

A lot of these melodic bands started out when they were barely 20 years old.

Unlike some (most) of you here, I am far too old (unfortunately) for Children Of Bodom to be a landmark in my formative years as a metal aficionado. I wasn't a kid when I discovered them and they were not a gateway band into heavier, more extreme stuff like many people have stated.
I do remember the first time I came across the band... It was an interview with Richard Christy where he mentions that Chuck himself really enjoyed this band and the guitar playing. How can anyone ignore a "recommendation" from the mighty Chuck himself? So I did the sensible thing to do and got hold of Something Wild (I have this tendency to always check out a band's first output and go on from there chronologically). I really loved the first track, I thought it was lightening in a bottle, honestly. Fast, heavy, melodic, kinda dark and yet so full of energy, almost uplifting! So different from the In Flames and Dimmu Borgir copycats of the time. I felt the rest of the album didn't really live up to the opening track and the songwriting wasn't quite there yet, but there was a lot of potential.
Then, for some reason, they vanished from my radar completely. Fast forward to 2003 and Hate Crew Deathroll was released. I had almost entirely forgotten about them when this album hit me like a freight train! It remains one of the most fun albums I have ever heard, regardless of genre. It's so energetic, so explosive, so catchy, I find it impossible to remain indifferent to it. It's an absolute blast from beginning to end, all killer no filler and a metal classic in my humble opinion. Together with the previous 3, it forms a very strong quartet of releases indeed. Later the band would have ups and downs, as most bands do, but I don't think they have a downright horrendous release. They were awesome live, Alexi was an amazing frontman, an excellent guitarist and dare I say a modern metal icon. He also seemed like a genuine fun loving nice guy. Very saddened to witness his passing. He will be dearly missed.

We get it dude, you're an ice-cold, tough-as-nails s.o.b who doesn't get all sobby about some musician fellow who just passed. You're a big man. Fair enough. Some people care tho, so do us all a favor and take your edgelord attitude somewhere else, will you? It's in poor taste and cringeworthy. You're just embarrassing yourself and pissing off a lot of people in the process.

I have been spinning several Children of Bodom and Sinergy records over the past few days. I have even been inspired enough to write a few reviews. In hindsight, I'm grateful that I was able to attend two COB shows back in 2017 and 2019. The news of Alexi Laiho's tragic demise certainly was a little shock. May he rest in peace and his friends and family members find the time to recover from that devastating tragedy.

I've enjoyed COB's music since 99. Alexi's death has hit me harder that Eddie Van Helen or any other recent music artist death. Laiho was easily one of the top 3 shredders in the last 25 years. His passion for playing was greater than his health. I noticed in recent live videos and article pictures that he looked so run down and thin. I'm no doctor, but it's likely he had some type of stomach/liver disease or cancer. The way close family and friends have been talking, he was sick for quite a while. Devastating loss. Laiho was a generational talent.

This news is a bad start to this year already.

Looks like many others had the same experience with COB as me for influence. I was already into extreme metal when I got into COB in my early teen years back in the early 00s.

Was also around the time when I started playing guitar and their music helped me become a better player cause I would get tabs of their stuff and spend hours working on playing their music.

10-15 years later , to this day when I pick up my guitar I still run through some COB riffs/lead work as a warm up or just out of enjoyment.

Sad to lose a fine guitarist.

I saw CoB on their 'Something Wild' tour in Finland. It wasn't a small city, by Finnish standards: over 80.000 people. It was Friday or Saturday night, and CoB was playing in a club. First 4-5 songs, and me and my girlfriend were the only people on the front. People, who weren't that many, were interested in drinking themselves into oblivion (I remember seeing "corpses" laying their heads on bar counters...). After a few songs, more folks started to come to see the band. In all there was probably under 20 people in the end on the dance floor...

CoB became "a tad" bigger pretty soon afterwards... I never got into the band but for the first 3 albums really, but that's how it goes sometimes.

R.I.P. Alexi Laiho.

If someone doesn't realize just how big they were, the news of his passing was on the page of one of Quebec's main newspapers and it was also announced during the evening news. Usually, the only mention of metal would be to announce Heavy MTL or something Metallica, Slayer or Iron Maiden related.

I got to see them live one time. It was at the time of my greatest fandom, probably Hatebreeder or Follow the Reaper era. Good show of course. I would really want to hear some of their later albums to see how they compare to the early classics. Just out of curiosity. Hate Crew Deathroll especially.

imo the albums after hate crew are complete shit, until a return to form on halo, which is pretty good - i don't remember the last two well enough to comment at all

Yeah, the band overall went to shit after FTR, but those early albums definitely rip.

Hate Crew gets a bad rep because it's followed by Are You Dead Yet? which builds on the thrashier, heavier sound in the worst ways, but Hate Crew itself is amazing.

The first 3 or 4 albums (depending on personnal tastes) are obviously the best ones.
But even on their "lesser" albums I always find a few songs I really like. Are You Dead Yet? have a great, catchy, title track. Not a bad album at all to me.
Halo of Blood and Hexed both have songs that could have been on Follow The Reaper or HCDR. I would suggest to those who have not listened to the band since 15 years to pick one of those.

If my memory is correct it was seen as a step down in its own time as well, because it signaled the shift to a more melodeath sound. In hindsight it's pretty subtle when compared to the next two albums which went so much further with it, but I think any bad rep it might have had has been washed away by how bad they got afterwards. One thing that stands out to me about Hate Crew nowadays (since I listened to it for the first time in probably a decade the other day) is that it's probably the only album where the riffs are actually really good. Bodom is all about melodies and soloing, the riffs themselves were a distant second in Alexi's mind I imagine. But on Hate Crew, it does a mini thing where the songs with the stupidest titles have some legitimately awesome riffs in them. Chokehold, Triple Corpse Hammerblow, and Lil' Bloodred Riding Hood all have some serious heaters in the rhythm section, and it's probably not a coincidence that this is the album where they chose to cover Silent Scream since Needled 24/7 starts off with basically the exact same riff.

If you're one of those people that fell off the band after the early years and want to revisit them now... well, they never reached the heights of those first few albums again, not by a long shot. I think Hate Crew is great, but it's definitely less great than Hatebreeder and Follow the Reaper and they entered a freefall shortly afterwards. I've brought this up a few times before, but a good way to gauge their albums is something I like to call "Roy's Law", which states "The quality of any given Bodom album is inversely proportional to how violent the grim reaper is acting on the album cover". When he's standing cold, beckoning, or mysterious, the album will likely be worth a listen. If he's violently murdering somebody, it's probably shit. So because of this, Something Wild, Hatebreeder, Follow the Reaper, Halo of Blood, and Hexed are good, while Blooddrunk and Relentless Reckless Forever are bad. AYDY is kind of ambiguous and as a result it has three and a half good songs but it mostly bad. Hate Crew and I Worship Chaos are the two that break the pattern, since Hate Crew is good and Chaos is super meh, but otherwise this is a very easy measuring stick if you aren't already familiar with everything.

I, myself got into Children of Bodom pretty much at the time Hate Crew Deathroll was released, and most likely (I'm trying to remember here, it's been 17 years since, give me a break ) was my gateway into the band. Needled 24/7 most likely was my first song by them, with a videoclip that fascinated me at the time with the motorcycles spinning in the cage and stuff. I remember loving HCD at the time, but slowly turned my attention towards the first three releases over time. To this day, I still respect HCD, but remember it as being a little less on the neoclassical/epic leads side, and more on the heavier riffing and catchy choruses.

When Are You Dead Yet? came out, I think that it cemented the opinion that a lot of fans had, that CoB were changing their sound. So even if there already was some criticism towards HCD before 05, people started to see it even more as a transition album towards a sound they didn't like. Still, I remember people really liking HCD, and like BastardHead stated up here, with Blooddrunk and following records getting worse and worse, HCD, in retrospective, might have become one of the classics to some people who didn't like it quite as much as the first three.

I also know for a fact that there were talks around the departure of Alexander Kuoppala and the recruiting of Roope Latvala. For some, this was the moment that really marked the end of classic Bodom era, as the sound started to change more drastically when Latvala joined. However, and this is something I also noticed BH, the rhythm section actually got more developped over HCD and AYDY, and that's something I still really appreciate. I was going through the first 5 records earlier this week, and I remember going "Oh damn!" on some of the riffs on AYDY. Latvala, who was described by Laiho himself as a veteran and solid guitarist, really seems to have stepped up the game for CoB when it comes to rhythm, while the rhythm section before AYDY and even more noticeacly before HCD was mostly just open chords à la power metal to support the guitars and keyboard leads.

In my opinion, both HCD and AYDY have their merits. While both aren't classics, in my opinion, they are still good for what they are. They have too many weaker moments for me to really love them as much as the first three, but I still really like them and can't help but mouth the words when Laiho screams "We're not gonna fall!"