Children of Bodom at the PlayStation Theater

Alexi Laiho (left) and Daniel Freyberg

Alexi "Wildchild" Laiho (born Markku Uula Aleksi Laiho) is from Espoo, Finland, where as a child he began playing the violin. Influenced by the heavy metal his sister enjoyed, he switched to guitar at age 11. He took guitar and piano lessons at a conservatory and first played in an experimental music band named T.O.L.K. with friends from the conservatory. In 1993 he founded the death metal band Inearthed with drummer Jaska Raatikainen; since childhood they had shared an interest in heavy metal, especially death metal groups. By the time Inearthed was to record its first album in 1997, the musicians changed the band's name to Children of Bodom, derived from the mysterious 1960 murders by Lake Bodom in Laiho's hometown. Laiho has been featured on the cover of Young Guitar Magazine several times, Guitar World magazine ranked him as one of the 50 fastest guitarists in the world, the readers of Metal Hammer voted him the world's best guitarist in 2006, and the readers of Total Guitar voted him the greatest metal guitarist of all time. The band presently consists of vocalist/lead guitarist Laiho, drummer Raatikainen, rhythm guitarist Daniel Freyberg, keyboardist Janne Wirman, and bassist Henkka Seppälä. Children of Bodom's ninth and most recent album is 2015's I Worship Chaos.

Children of Bodom's first four albums recently were re-mastered, given bonus tracks, and re-released, and so the band's 20 Years Down & Dirty North American Tour was designed to spotlight the band's vintage catalogue. At the PlayStation Theater tonight, Laiho reworked the old songs by injecting the maturity that two decades can bring, making the songs faster and more intense. Unlike the majority of 21st century metal bands who specialize in the growl or the crunch, Children of Bodom married a heavy dose of lightning guitar acrobatics to the band's extreme metal and melodic metal sounds. Laiho's sophisticated guitar leads were rooted in 1980s metal, but overall the music leaned to the coarser end of death metal. The band's slam often was lightened by Wirman's symphonic and neoclassical keyboard flourishes, but never really distanced the performance for long from the band's zooming white-knuckle ride. At a time when most of the newer heavy metal bands sound pretty much the same, Children of Bodom rose above the dark cacophony by offer exhilarating guitar work over potent headbanging compositions.

Visit Children of Bodom at www.cobhc.com.