As the year began, we received the sad news that we had lost Alexi Laiho, one of this century’s most gifted shredders, the life and soul of the party, and by all accounts a gentle and kind man. He had formed the band Inearthed in 1993 with school friend and drummer Jaska Raatikainen, and by 1997 it had morphed into Children Of Bodom, named after the unsolved murder of three teenagers at Lake Bodom in their hometown of Espoo, a short drive from Helsinki. The band soon became known for their raucous and high-energy use of solos, keys and choruses.
Although COB split in 2019, Alexi continued to make music with new project Bodom After Midnight, and performed three small gigs in October 2020, two months before he passed away. In April of this year, the remaining members released the EP Paint The Sky With Blood, featuring the three songs they’d written together, as intense and impressive as anything Alexi had recorded before.