CHILDREN OF BODOM – The essence of CoB

Med intervjuavtale med Children of Bodom i lomma, ankom jeg Oslo Spektrum relativt tidlig for å hente min billett til The Unholy Alliance. Noe knot ble det men jeg fikk da billetten til slutt. Intervjuet ble flyttet litt på ett par ganger og da det endelig var klart, fikk jeg vite at det ble med Janne istedenfor Alexi, som jeg hadde forberedt intervju med. I tillegg ble det raskt klart at Janne ville bli raskest mulig ferdig med intervjuet for det eneste han hadde på hjernen var mat. Derfor ble dette intervjuet noe redusert. Siden Janne hadde bestemt seg for å være en smule vanskelig, fant jeg ut at jeg skulle åpne intervjuet med det uunngåelige spørsmålet om hva han selv syntes med at enkelte kaller bandet for Children of Boredom.

JANNE – I don’t give a fuck. I have never heard it before. But if someone want to say it, let them fucking say it, I don’t care, hehe.

ET – Chaos Ridden Years is your second official live release. The first one was Tokyo Warhearts. What is in your opinion the biggest difference on these two releases?
JANNE – The first one was released when we just had 2 albums out. It was just done because the Japanese people had it recorded and it was an idea from the Japanese record company, and we said ok. At that time I don’t think we where ready to release a live album yet.
On this new one the DVD was the main thing for us. The CD was just released as a bonus.

ET – When you recorded the gig in Stockholm, was it your intension to release the take as a live CD and a live DVD, or was the recording so good that you that you had to release it as an official release?
JANNE – The intension was to release a DVD at least. Everybody seems to release a DVD these days. But we only did this one take in Stockholm and it was a bad decision. Normally we should have recorded many gigs so we could choose stuff, but we only did one recording. That cause us some problems, but we are fine with it. We are happy with the way it turned out.

ET – I found the band documentary especially amusing.
JANNE – We just tried to do something that we thought the fans would like to see. We wanted to put something else in the documentary; like the interviews and not just us wasting our time drinking.

ET – There were some kissing on the documentary. So I have to ask; what’s with you and Alexi?
JANNE – Hehehehehehe, well…it started as a rumor that we saw on the internet and everything just got…carried away..ahhhhhhh. We just did it to just fuck with people, piss people off, hehehe.

ET – Back to the serious things again….do you feel that you caught the essence of Children of Bodom live on this DVD?
JANNE – I think so, yes. I like the camera work and the sound is good. Like I said earlier, we only recorded one show and that is a problem. I am really happy with how the band is playing but especially the solo with me and Alexi is really bad. We use to play it a lot better, but it depends on the mood and therefore it is different every night. But otherwise I am happy with it.

ET – Would you say that the show was something out of the ordinary?
JANNE – No, it was just one of the gigs from the European tour.

ET – What’s with the car on stage?
JANNE – Hehe, we wanted to build something special to put on stage. All the bands have something on stage nowadays, and we were thinking about what to do. Then we came up with the idea of cutting this car in two and put the front part on stage.

ET – Will the gig tonight be the same as the DVD one?
JANNE – No, this one will be different. We are one of the opening bands and we don’t play that long. We picked the most important songs and we will try to deliver the same show as always, but in a smaller package.

ET – Why did you choose to call the DVD “Chaos Ridden Years”?
JANNE – I don’t actually know hehe. I was somewhere else when they picked that name, hahaha. I don’t know. I guess it because the early years when we were young and crazy and drunk all the time.

ET – With a lot of bands it’s easy to say what style they are playing, but with Children of Bodom it’s rather difficult. Do you feel that this is a good thing or a bad thing?
JANNE – Ohhh, that’s a good question. I feel it’s a good thing, even though some people are trying to put a label on us and some of them are putting us in a category that we are not, and that’s not a good thing. These things will tell us how big the variety of the music is, there are so many different styles which we use and that is why we ourselves always call it heavy metal. Because that is what it is, hehe. It causes some small problems for some people when they are trying to put a label on us. Some people in Germany call us power metal, and when someone says power metal to me, it remains me of really bad German bands, hehe.

ET – Actually on the Wikipedia website you are categorized as power metal, death metal and black metal.
JANNE – Really? Yeah right.

ET – What is it with Children of Bodom and the reaper? He appears on the front cover on all of your albums.
JANNE – It has something to do with when we were looking for the cover art for the first album and we found this picture of the reaper that we used. And then we sort of found out that this works for us. The first three are kind of look-alikes, but on the fourth album, Hate Crew Deathroll we got a new designer and he made it a little bit different than on the first three albums. On the last album we got a new designer again and that’s why it’s a bit different. But the thing is that we kind of found out that the reaper suit us well and we decided to go with it.

ET – The tour you are on right now is called The Unholy Alliance, and you share the stage with In Flames, Lamb Of God, Thine Eyes Bleed and Slayer. What do you think of this line up?
JANNE – I think it’s great. When we did this Unholy Alliance in US, the line up was almost the same. Mastodon played instead of In Flames there. That one was great, but for Europe I think this line up is better. Both In Flames and Children of Bodom are pretty strong names over here while Slayer are big everywhere, hehe. Lamb of God is good friends of us and they are doing it pretty good in the UK. Thine Eyes Bleed is a band we never toured with before, but they are really nice guys so I think this line up is great.

ET – The tour is almost over now. What is the first thing that comes to your mind if I ask: what do you remember the most from the tour?
JANNE – Someone asked me that a couple of days ago and I couldn’t come up with something special. It’s been a great tour. But I would pick the day when we were in Helsinki. We had a travel day so we had the day off. Randy Blythe, the singer of Lamb of God and I went up to Lake Bodom and we went sightseeing all around Helsinki. Kerry King joined us a little later and we were just drinking and having a great time. It was great especially for Randy, since this was his first trip to Scandinavia and the chance to show him our home town, which was really something special.

ET – Is there a special gig you remember more than the others?
JANNE – I remember the gig in Paris because it was a huge venue; it was like 16000 people there, but for us the gig in Tampere was the best. Helsinki was good but Tampere was better. It’s always like that in Helsinki. The people there are weird, hehe.

ET – I think it’s the same thing here in Norway and Oslo. The people stand more or less like a statue and just looking at the band playing.
JANNE – Yes, that’s what I mean. It’s the same in Finland and Helsinki. In other cities it’s like a party all around when we are playing but in Helsinki the people just stands there like you said.

Og så takket en noe utålmodig Janne Wirman for seg og hastet av gårde for å innta sin middag. Jeg selv måtte finne meg i å vente til neste konsert, for Thine Eyes Bleed gikk i vasken for min del under dette intervjuet. Slike ting skjer, men man overlever sikkert dette også.