Celebrating their 20th anniversary of the debut album called Something Wild, the kings of finish melodic death metal

CHILDREN OF BODOM embarked for a tour with guests Oni and Forever Still. We watched their show at Tvornica Kulture (Zagreb) to see if they still got it.

As usual the venue opened its doors at 20h. The concert started at 20.30h with the Canadian band Oni.

Oni is a young progressive death metal band from Ontario. I say young because there is only one studio album Ironshore behind them. Despite that, band brought huge amounts of energy to the stage and showed a secure domination. Also it was an unusual opportunity to see headless guitars and modern combination of xylophone and synth. Unfortunately, xylosynth was quiet and rarely heard. It is not unusual for a support bands to have a relatively bad sound during a performance and this was no exception. If you want to know how they sound just imagine combination of Meshuggah and Dream Theater. Thirty percent of the hall was filled during their show which is not bad. Band's name in Croatian language is translated as „they“ but after some googling one can find that they are named after some demon from japanese folklore. Also we have a local band with the same name so some people thought they will be watching them.

01. Barn Burner
02. Eternal Recurrence
03. Spawn and Feed
04. Thrive
05. The Science
06. The Only Cure
07. Coast to Coast

Second onto the stage was Danish newcomer alternative metal band Forever Still, fronted by a hot female vocalist Maja.  Some said they can be explained as some mixture of Evanescence and Lacuna Coil.  Despite being the bad choice for a support band they delivered a strongly energised show. They filled more than half of the hall but from the beginning it was obvious that the audience will rather have a visual than audio pleasure as some folks were shouting ''baci sisu da se igramo'' (throw your boob so we can play) on which she answered "Hope you are saying something nice". Also, bad sound continued through their performance, especially the bass. It was their first performance here so the crowd complimented them with a loud applause.

01. The Last Day
02. Awake the Fire
03. Miss Madness
04. Fight
05. Tied Down
06. I'm Out
07. Once Upon a Nightmare
08. Breathe In
09. Save Me
10. Scars

And finally, at the 22:20h it was a fucking time to hear the crown jewell of the gig, the good old Children of Bodom. This is band's second concert in Croatia after 11 years and on this „20 Years Down & Dirty“ tour, band is playing hits from the first four albums. So we can say it is an early discography best of tour. It was really nice to hear my high-school heroes for the first time despite having few bad albums in a recent time. My expectation regarding the audience was to see small number of oldschool metalheads. To be honest, Children Of Bodom's golden time passed long ago and they are no more as powerful name as they used to be. So I was pleasantly surprised to see completely filled hall. The setlist brought us on a trip down memory lane with every fucking song. „Deadnight Warrior“ was an opening bomb of a song that initiated a nuclear reaction. During the first three songs sound was still terrible but with the fourth song „Black Widow“ it suddenly improved. The energy and quality stayed the same till the end due to the band not holding back. The band interacted with the audience in a mature manner and not too often. During the show all eyes were on the frontman Alexi Laiho and his crushing riffs and picks he threw after every song while the rest of the band was more or less static. They finished their set with „The Nail“ and „Towards Dead End“, two songs I would never expect to be the closing ones. For me they are not strong enough. Also only one of my two favourite songs was heard that night, „Everytime I Die“. It is unfortunately that they didn't play the second one - „Follow the Reaper“.

01. Deadnight Warrior
02. In the Shadows
03. Needled 24/7
04. Black Widow
05. Lake Bodom
06. Warheart
07. Angels Don't Kill
08. Red Light in My Eyes (Part 2)
09. Hate Me!
10. Downfall
11. Everytime I Die
12. Hate Crew Deathroll
13. Bed of Razors
14. Children of Decadence
15. The Nail
16. Towards Dead End