Album Review: Children of Bodom - "Hexed"

The first time listening to “Hexed,” the new album from Finnish death metal powerhouse Children of Bodom, compels the listener to immediately recall the past. 

For myself, this meant going back to three albums in particular, all in an effort to make sure that what I thought I thought was actually what I thought (my consciousness is a strange place.)  With haste, “Halo of Blood,””I Worship Chaos,” and reaching all the way back to “Follow the Reaper,” all went into my playlists.

The first two because “Hexed” sounds like a stark departure from the path CoB had been inexorably marching down for two complete album cycles.  The last because this was the closest touchstone to what “Hexed” represents.

That is not to say that this new album is simply a re-tread by a band wending their own nostalgic avenue through the corridors of what was successful before.  “Hexed” is a grinning, sauntering demon all its own, though it does remorselessly abandon the tenets of its two predecessors.

From the opening crunch of “This Road,” the mission statement could not be more lucid – “Hexed” is to draw from the myriad of influences that have shaped both Children of Bodom and their chosen genre since its collective inception.  Certainly and above all there is blistering metal in its undiluted form, but the molten liquid is poured into punk rock casts, producing ingots of an altogether different composition.

At the tip of this album’s spear is the glossy precision of Alexi Laiho’s guitar playing, which remains the band’s feature element more than twenty years into their career.  The acrobatics of the primary riff of “Glass Houses” is evidence enough that in an era of metal gone mad with brutality, Children of Bodom still carries the banner for comparatively clean guitar artistry and provides a safe haven where six-string nerds can get their daily bread.

Where the punk roots start to show is right at the album’s fulcrum from side A to side B with “Kick in a Spleen,” which surely bears the hallmarks of death metal’s doctrine, but abbreviates it with staccato riffs and gang choruses that sound like the intersection of the Casualties and classic Anthrax.
One need not get farther than the title track to see the tie-in to “Follow the Reaper.”  “Hexed” the song would have fit right in between “Children of Decadence” and “Everytime I Die” some eighteen years ago.  The very same idiomatic guitar exhibitions, furious snare pounding and consummate keyboard dressing that propelled that album lives in the blast furnace of this one.

As the album begins to sunset, it lashes out again with “Say Never Look Back,” which for all the memorable tracks contained within, might be the album’s singly most infectious.  A fire-starter at the outset, the song pauses with genius at the one-minute mark to introduce a new, simple and entirely too catchy main riff, before it folding it back into the larger mix to be revisited later.  The insistent but not overbearing beat makes the song easily digestible and suddenly we have the makings of a true album ear worm.

“Hexed” is easily the best CoB album since 2011’s “Relentless Reckless Forever,” though it is an entirely different beast than that timeless classic.  “RRF” reveled in deep riffs and groovy hooks, which “Hexed” eschews in favor of climatic guitarcraft.  Neither is right or wrong in the grand scheme of composing a great album, but the dichotomy serves to illustrate just how versatile the band has been across their career.

There are no real weak points to “Hexed.”  Even the lesser cuts such as “Soon Departed” are enjoyable and can be disparaged only in the sense that they do not meet the lofty ambitions of some of the selections discussed above.  The album also goes by in a flash; in just a shade over forty-five minutes, eleven songs have come and gone, so the album doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Following the incessant hammering of “Halo of Blood” and the introspection and change of “I Worship Chaos,” “Hexed” is a reminder that Children of Bodom hasn’t forgotten their roots, or forgotten how to set to standard for the occasionally floundering genre of death metal.  This album damn near everything right and is a worthy addition to the band’s evolving legacy.