A Review of the 2005 Death Metal Album "Are You Dead Yet?" by Children of Bodom

Children of Bodom became a true gritty, rough death metal band in 2005 with their album titled Are You Dead Yet? And this transformation did not really hurt the band that much (at least after 2003’s Hate crew Deathroll and the departure of guitarist Alexander Kuoppala). However, the album is not as good as the band’s first two albums. With Finland being like a factory where death metal bands come into the industry virtually every year, these guys were not Finland’s best death metal band but they may be the most well-known because of Alexi “Wildchild” Laiho. This album could be considered a transitional kind of album because this album is a more groove based album in comparison to the first three albums from this Finnish band.

After the heavy and aggressive song "Living Dead Beat," we are introduced to the title track. There is a kind of slushy, feedback kind of noise in this song. The shouts in this song are pretty impressive. We hear a riff that shows a return briefly to the previous album and before. The song In Your Face starts out with a riff that resembles the sound of mini machine gun fire. It is pretty epic and spooky and then there is a riff that resembles late 1990’s and early 2000’s Judas Priest. The song is good however there are too many of the wrong kind of words repeated throughout the song. Alexi Laiho sounds like one angry guy especially in this song. What I am about to mention next may surprise some of you. The song Next In Line is one of my favorite songs in this album because of the grooves and the riff before the chorus plus the chorus itself. The drumming part afterwards is pretty stellar too. "Trashed, Lost and Strungout" is one of the singles on this album and there is this sort of faster punk metal feel to it.

The album finishes with the song "We’re Not Gonna Fall" which may be the best song on the album. The song is about taking the hand of a brave person as you go through life. Don’t give up and fall when you can succeed. In spite of the title of the album, Children of Bodom at this point in their career was in a state of transition because of the departure of Alexander Kuoppala. They did quite well and this was the first full length album to feature the contributions of Stone guitarist Roope Latvala. These guys certainly were not done yet and they would go on for another 14 years after this.