CHILDREN OF BODOM Frontman Talks About Upcoming Album 'Are You Dead Yet?'

CHILDREN OF BODOM guitarist/vocalist Alexi Laiho recently gave an exclusive interview to the COB fan site Scythes-Of-Bodom.com. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: Where exactly was the [new] album recorded?

Alexi: "It's recorded in a house in Helsinki with (Mikko) Karmila which is actually in Eastern Helsinki, this part of the town which is like in the middle of the woods and right by the beach. It's a nice place definitely. It's just this house or it's actually a cabin or whatever and it's a nice place. That's where we recorded and we're gonna mix at Finnvox."

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: So the producer was Mikko Karmila. Why did you choose him?

Alexi: "There's no reason except that when it comes to the mixing. We knew that he was gonna mix the album eventually anyway so we might just as well try to record with the same guy. And we wanted to try something different and not going to Astia every single time. So we wanted to try something different."

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: How many songs will be on the album?

Alexi: "Nine."

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: Was "Trashed, Lost & Strungout" re-recorded?

Alexi: "I will do the vocals and leads again."

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: How will be the rest of the songs? Are they gonna be brutal and more melodic than "Hate Crew Deathroll"? How is the speed? Do you have fast songs and slow ones, like the usual "ballad"?

Alexi: "Well, we got both, you know? As far as the tempo goes, we have stuff where the tempo is like something we maybe haven't used before. For me it's always hard to put the music into words, you know. It's something you should hear. But I can tell you that the objective of the band is we just wanna make it more extreme and just more aggressive and push it as far as we can. And mostly definitely not going to any softer direction."

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: Any song names ready?

Alexi: "Well, the title track, 'Are You Dead Yet?', is one of them, then 'In Your Face' and we got this slower song called 'Punch Me I Bleed'."

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: What will the songs be about? The typical "fuck you" and "leave me be" stuff?

Alexi: "That kind of stuff but also for example like 'Are You Dead Yet?', which is more about self-destruction in a way which tells about the feeling when you're six weeks in row on fucking tour with drinking and partying and wrecking yourself and when you get back home you're like looking in the mirror and just asking yourself, 'Are you dead yet?' I actually came up with that song when I trashed my arm. I was feeling like shit because that was the time when I was supposed to write new stuff but I couldn't play and I was like, 'Oh man, this fucking sucks.' But I figured that I could write some lyrics or whatever and that was actually the first thing I came up with. I was looking at myself and I had a fucking black eye, I had stitches, scratches all over my face and a fucking cast on my arm and I was like, 'Dude, you gotta do something about yourself.' (laughs)."

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: So the name of the new album will be "Are You Dead Yet?" and…

Alexi (interrupts): "I know what the next question is gonna be about that. The Swedish band [CARNAL FORGE, who released an album called 'Aren't You Dead Yet?' in 2004], right?

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: Yeah!

Alexi: "I don't know what to tell you, dude! I mean I have never heard about that band before so it's pretty obvious that we didn't rip it off. But we're not gonna change it, though. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. That's the kind of title that really fits the whole thing right now. I didn't think about it but right now there's so many bands that have the same song titles or even album titles, which is not the end of the world, you know? It's almost the same but it's not the same, though."

Scythes-Of-Bodom.com: About 90 percent of the people at message boards said that they don't like this name very much and expected something more creative and were a bit disappointed. And I have so say this album name has nothing unique in my opinion. Every band could name their album like that. "Hate Crew Deathroll", for example, can only be used by you, you know?

Alexi: "Yeah, that's true. Well, whenever we come up with something new there are a lot of fans who act like this when we have a new album. It's like their thing saying that even though it is not true. It's a matter of taste but some of them will always say that the last album was better the new one, you know? I'm not saying all fans, only some of then, you know? If they don't like the album title then it's too bad but I mean that's what we're doing right now. But I mean I gonna just say don't judge the whole motherfucking thing based on the album title."

Read Alexi Laiho's entire interview with Scythes-Of-Bodom.com at this location.