**Readup 4 me 2 bookmarked**Not for public readin

For a moment in 1998, it looked as if Children of Bodom’s ship might sink just as it arrived in port. One year earlier, the Finnish band had released its debut record, Something Wild, on Europe’s Spinefarm Records, and its follow-up tour of the continent had been successful. The group had good reason to feel optimistic about its future. But 19-year-old frontman Alexi Laiho wasn’t happy and hadn’t been for some time. A psychiatrist might have told him he was suffering from depression, but Laiho hadn’t sought a professional opinion. Instead, he treated his condition with alcohol and drugs and, in short order, began spiraling out of control. It was around Christmas that his problems came to a head. Laiho decided that he’d had enough of life and was ready to die. Downing 30 tranquilizers, he knocked back a few shots of whisky and slipped into unconsciousness.“A friend found me on the floor and brought me to the hospital. I wasn’t in a good place,” he explains in what is a masterpiece of understatement. As Laiho discovered, his depression stemmed from an incident in his youth. At the age of 16, he’d gotten into a brawl with some hometown goons and found himself fighting [the text stops here; I take it to mean the time when some older kids were supposedly stalking him and nearly killed him once] “I was just feeling worse and worse,” says the 25-year-old guitarist. “Finally, a couple of years after the pills, I had a complete mental breakdown and ended up in a hospital for a week. It was my third time. It was the worst I’d ever felt in my life. That’s when I decided I’d be damned if I ever felt that way again. I just made a decision to get better.”Foregoing medication and therapy, Laiho pulled his life together by embracing his love of music. Since then, his career, and that of his band mates—drummer Jaska W. Raatikainen, guitarist Roope Latvala, bassist Henkka T. Blacksmith, and keyboardist Janne Warman—has grown dramatically. The year after Laiho’s suicide attempt, the group released its sophomore effort, Hatebreeder. Next came Follow the Reaper, a masterful blend of brutal death and black metal and highly melodic, synth- and lead guitar-driven prog rock. The extreme music scene had never heard anything like it, and wouldn’t again until the band dropped its follow up, Hate Crew Deathroll. On it, the band continued to experiment with its sound, forging an even heavier metal hammer. The album hit number one on the Finnish music charts—higher even than Britney Spears—and Children of Bodom became superstars in Europe, playing stadiums and appearing on TV. Their most recent release, an EP called Trashed, Lost, and Strung Out (Century Media), has brought them even greater accolades. Most astonishing to Laiho, though, is that he has emerged as a guitar hero. Thanks to his virtuosic chops and keen awareness of the power of onstage presence, Laiho has become an inspiration to other guitarists who want to excel at playing. He belongs to a new breed of metal guitarists who believe solos are cool, and sucking at your instrument just sucks. “The whole guitar hero thing, where everyone played fast and had great technique, was back in the Eighties,” says Laiho. “And it died out when grunge came in. Then we had nu-metal, and those bands didn’t have guitar solos; I don’t think half of their guitarists knew how to play in the first place. But when I was learning to play, players like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani and Zakk Wylde were leading the way. They were my influences.” Perhaps now, Laiho concludes, the wheel has turned full circle. “Kids come up to me and say, ‘It’s cool to hear solos and stuff. You don’t hear that anywhere anymore.’ I think people missed it, even if they didn’t know they did.” It’s a sweet reward for a group that was initially dismissed within its local scene for having too much melody, too many leads, and shockingly high production values. When Children of Bodom formed in the mid-Nineties, black metal bands wanted to play as loud and as fast as possible and wore their albums’ shitty productions as badges of pride. “It’s like there was this black metal book with all of these incredibly stupid rules in it,” says Laiho. “You couldn’t play solos; you couldn’t be good at you instruments . . . not that good, anyway. And people would want their records to sound like shit. We figured, Fuck that. We’re going to do what we want.”After all, Laiho had set an incredibly high goal for himself even before he’d begun playing guitar. “I was 10 years old and watching MTV when the video for Steve Vai’s ‘For the Love of God’ from the Passion and Warfare album came on. That made me say, ‘Fuck, I have to buy a guitar.’ Everything he did was so cool. The way he sounded, the way he looked, the stuff he did with the instrument—it was just crazy. I knew it was what I had to do.” Laiho had been playing violin since he was five. his earliest musical recollections involve listening to classical music—“which is why I wanted to play violin,” he says—and his parents have told him he was singing before he knew how to talk. “It’s a little weird, I know,” he acknowledges.Most parents would shudder at the idea of their child switching from the entirely respectable violin to its louder, nastier distant cousin, but Laiho’s parents encouraged his interest. Not only did they buy him his first guitar and amp—a Strat knockoff and a 60-watt Marshall combo—but also wrote notes excusing the budding guitarist from school for feigned illnesses, so he could practice. By his early teens, Laiho was dividing his time between woodshed sessions in his bedroom—surrounded by no less than five Steve Vai posters—and skateboarding with his friends. “Something had to be sacrificed; for me it was school,” he says. “I didn’t care. I didn’t have any interest in what my teachers were telling me, and my mom knew I wasn’t going to graduate high school anyway. She helped me succeed in the thing that interested me.”Even before he started cutting classes to shred in his bedroom, Laiho had begun taking guitar lessons at a local music school. For five years, he learned Jazz and Classical technique, as well as proper picking. “All the crap that no kid ever wants to learn!” he says with a laugh. “No one was there to teach me sweep arpeggios and stuff like that. So I’d buy instructional videos and learn from them. I taught myself a lot of the metal technique.” As a result, he says, “sometimes I do things wrong; I’m just banging the shit out of the guitar. But who cares, as long as it sounds cool. The key is to find the balance between technique and attitude, and that’s something they don’t teach you in school. You can’t play like John Petrucci and play in an extreme metal band. It just doesn’t work.”Laiho knew from the outset that he wanted to form a band. When he received his first guitar, he brought it to school every day. There was a drum kit in his classroom, and he’d frequently enlist a friend to smash away on the skins while he jammed along. “I didn’t know how to play at all,” he says. “I just made up chords. I loved the noise of it all.” A few years later, drummer Jaska Raatikainen began attending his school. By then, Laiho had started to figure out his instrument. “That’s really where Children of Bodom began,” he says. “The original lineup grew around that. By the time we were in high school, we were really beginning to make it work.”Unfortunately, it was then that Nirvana became the biggest band on the planet. Laiho recalls the difficulty of performing in a group that unabashedly embraced guitar virtuosity. “All the hair metal was gone. I remember when the change happened, too. I was watching Headbanger’s Ball in the early Nineties and thinking to myself, Why is everyone looking so fucking stupid these days? The musicians were dressing in flannel shirts and their hair was all messed up. They looked like shit.”Nonetheless, the band, which initially went by the name In Earth, began circulating demo tapes and playing local clubs. Resistance from club owners gradually softened as bands like Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth began to change the musical landscape with their intricate guitar lines and orchestral keyboard parts. although Children of Bodom pushed the envelope further than Dimmu and Cradle, more clubs were willing to give them a chance. Eventually, word began to spread about the cool new group from Finland. As it happened, one of the band’s demos ended up at a now-defunct indie label in Belgium. Considering the musical climate of the times, Laiho had no expectations that a record contract was in his group’s immediate future. So, when the Belgians offered to put out a Children of Bodom record, he jumped at the opportunity. “It was the shittiest contract ever. We had to pay to record the album. Then we had to buy 1,000 copies to sell ourselves. It was ridiculous, but we didn’t think we’d get anything better.”On a whim, Laiho passed a copy of the band’s tape to an employee at Spinefarm Records, one of Europe’s more active extreme metal labels. To everyone’s surprise the exec loved it and offered to sign the group. ”Unfortunately, we already had the contract with the Belgians,” says Laiho. “But it sucked so bad. So we told them that we broke up and couldn’t deliver the record. Then we came up with a new name and signed to Spinefarm.”The name Laiho and his band mates selected couldn’t have been more chilling to their fellow citizens. Children of Bodom is a reference to a triple murder that took place in 1960 near Lake Bodom in Espoo, Finland. Four teens went camping; three died, one made it out alive. The killer got away and for years the police failed to solve the crime.“We were trying to find something cool to call ourselves and we came across this story,” explains Laiho. “’Bodom’ sounded pretty metal, so we combined it with every word we could think of. ‘Children of Bodom’ sounded the best.”“The crazy thing is that, thanks to new DNA evidence, the police think they’ve solved the crime. They say the kid that survived killed his friends. I’m not sure I believe it.”Once signed to Spinefarm, Children of Bodom quickly saw their fortunes change. After releasing Something Wild, Spinefarm (which still releases the band’s records in Europe) sent the group on its first major tour with Hypocrisy and Covenant. Having never played outside Finland, Children of Bodom were pleasantly surprised at the enthusiastic reception they received. In fact, the further they drifted from Scandinavia, the less often they heard grumbles about their stylistic flourishes. “People’s tastes were much more open, says Laiho. “They were bringing their own influences to the mix.”The tour brought them other rewards in addition to fans. “We’d never been anywhere with free booze before,” says Laiho, laughing. “That was great! We were riding on the bus with the other bands—it was a huge bus—and just having a great time. They accepted us very quickly once they could see that we knew how to play and knew how to party.”Children of Bodom finally made it to the United States in 2000, just after the release of Hatebreeder, to play the famed Milwaukee Metalfest. Although the event failed to impress the band members, the audience’s reception overwhelmed them. “We thought there’d be three dudes out there when we played, and after a few minutes even they’d walk out,” Laiho says. “But when we took the stage, the whole house was packed. I didn’t know what to think.”The band returned to the States the following year to showcase at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas, and, despite having to overcome some technical glitches involving a dearth of 220-volt adapters for their equipment, blew away the jaded industry crowd. “That’s when we realized we could tour here,” says the guitarist. “Our records were starting to sell well and we had the confidence. That’s all it took, really. Since then, it’s just been a whirlwind.”Laiho says he’s always liked rock and roll characters, “crazy dudes who are entertaining to watch,” he says. “I probably wouldn’t want to work with them, but I love watching them, because they’re nuts. Like Axl Rose. He’s the stereotype of the crazy rock star. I think it’s kind of sad that the whole rock star thing is missing today. No one drinks, trashes hotel rooms, or fucks groupies in the tour bus. It’s all about being a vegetarian and doing yoga and shit like that.”So how does Laiho’s rock star lifestyle stack up? Any drinking?“Oh yeah,” he says with enthusiasm. “I think we’ve got that covered.”Trashed hotel rooms? “Without a doubt. We wrecked one in Greece that cost us 2,000 euros in damages. You pay for it, man, but it’s worth every cent.”Any groupies on the tour bus? “Yeah . . .”Lots of them? “Yeah . . .”Does he keep photographic evidence like Gene Simmons does? “No!” he shouts, then laughs. “I guess I’ve still got a way to go before I get the whole thing right.”None of this is meant to undercut Laiho’s dedication to guitar; he typically spends his days off in the rehearsal studio, pushing his technique as far as it can go. But as much as his chops are a reflection of the heroes he grew up with, so is his hard-partying lifestyle. You can’t develop on a steady diet of Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, and Mötley Crüe and not indulge in the many distractions of road life. Simply put, true guitar heroes know that playing well isn’t enough. “There are lots of guitar players out there who play super fast and super well, but they’re also super lame. Like Dream Theater,” he says, referring once again to his favorite whipping boys. “It’s not even music; it’s sports. And then there are the guys who concentrate on all the little details and never fuck up one note when they play live. You know what? That’s not cool! If you’re going crazy onstage and you miss a note or two, who gives a shit? It just shows you were really into it.“Though I suppose that pretending to be a rock star and not being able to play at all is even worse.”It’s a problem Laiho doesn’t need to worry about. In fact, life looks trouble-free for the young guitarist right now. Metal has returned to prominence, and kids too young to know who Vai and Van Halen are—forget about Hendrix or Page—now look to Laiho’s generation of guitar players for inspiration. Hell, he even has a column in this very magazine. “I know,” he says in disbelief. “It’s totally fucking insane. I don’t see myself as a guitar hero. But it’s flattering if people dig the way I play. It’s nice to know all the hard work wasn’t for nothing.”For all his success, Laiho is still the kid woodshedding in his room, watching MTV, and dreaming about his idols. It still drives him to perfect his craft and keeps the young star grounded. “A lot of people say that after you’re 15 you don’t have idols anymore,” he says. “But I actually do, and I don’t want to lose them.” Even as he becomes one himself.
Alexi’s Essential Virtuoso Albums
1. Steve Vai Passion and Warfare“This is what got me started. There’s still stuff in there that no one else will ever be able to do.”
2. Ozzy Osbourne Tribute“I love it better than either of the first two albums. It’s live and honest. You can hear that Randy Rhoads is doing the rhythm guitars and the fills at the same time.”
3. Pantera Vulgar Display of Power“It changed how metal guitar players were playing. People wanted the Dimebag Darrell sound.”
4. Racer X Live Extreme, Volume 1“That live album was amazing. They were doing all these crazy double-riff things that still blow me away.”
5. Black Label Society The Blessed Hellride”The solos are great. Zakk’s picking and using his fingers as well, which is something I’m not as good at. I’d like to learn to do that better.”