CHILDREN OF BODOM Frontman Talks About Making Of 'Relentless Reckless Forever'

Steven Rosen of Ultimate-Guitar.com recently conducted an interview with guitarist/vocalist Alexi Laiho of Finnish metallers CHILDREN OF BODOM. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: How did you get into recording mode for the "Relentless Reckless Forever" record? Are you someone who woodsheds ideas?

Alexi: Usually it's like it's always been. When you start from fucking scratch, that's the toughest thing to do ever. Because when you have absolutely nothing and you know you have to create something better, that's a tricky situation. However, that's when you have to start thinking about it. You have to go, "Okay, just grab your fucking guitar and start playing. Do whatever it takes." The last time I was staring at my table and staring at my guitar for like almost four fucking hours and I was like, "Dude, I have nothing." It was horrible. Then I put a CD on. You know the band Europe? I had their compilation. I put that on and just starting riffing on that album. I had a great fucking time doing that. I just liked playing along with it. Then before you know it, I would come up with melodies and things like that. I mean, they weren't stolen from them. It helped me to start the process. Sometimes you need to do stuff like that.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Before you go into record guitars, your parts have already been rehearsed and written?

Alexi: Yeah. We practice and rehearse. You should do that anyway, but it's a good fucking way to save money. You shouldn't spend three fucking months in the studio just to learn a song. In the studio when you hear it from a different point of you then you go, "I want to try this and that." Of course, some new shit comes to life sometimes and we'll change a couple of things here and there. But yeah, everything is practiced or rehearsed before we hit the studio.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: You do a cover of Eddie Murphy's "Party All The Time". What drew you to the idea of doing a cover of an R&B song like that one?

Alexi: Doing stupid-ass covers is one of our favorite hobbies. Eddie Murphy and Rick James are fucking awesome. Have you seen the video for that one? That was looping over and over one night when we were partying. I think our bass player was like, "That's the one we should cover." He made a good point. The thing is we had already done Britney Spears, so it wouldn't be as funny to cover fucking Christina Aguilera or something like that. We had done Kenny Rogers, SLAYER, and Pat Benatar. We had never done Eddie Murphy.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: I read that you chose [producer] Matt Hyde because of his attitude and the way he responded to your music. Was that a big part of it?

Alexi: Yeah, for me it was. It turned out to be a really good decision. He worked with SLAYER and MONSTER MAGNET, but I'm not into fucking credentials. That shit doesn't impress me that much. If the producer is fucking dick, then who cares if you sound like a SLAYER record. I think him and me, we share a really similar love for music and the commitment to make an awesome album and sacrifice anything and everything just to make it sound good not matter what.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Are you a taskmaster in the studio?

Alexi: When we're writing a song and stuff like that, I'll pretty much tell them what to play. If they can't get it down then I'll say, "Take your time." I'm not a fucking dick to every dude. These guys are my fucking childhood friends. I trust them and they will get it down. I'm the guy who is going to be first in the studio and I'll be the last dude to be there. That doesn't mean I'm always there being a Nazi guy telling people what to do. I let them do their own thing. Sometimes I'll say a couple of things here and there. I think every band needs that. There has to be something that calls the shots at the end of the day. I take care of the writing of the music. Then there's a bass player that's taking care of the merch business. The keyboard player, with him I do a lot of stuff with music, but he knows the business. He works with the managers and stuff. Everybody does something. Everybody has a role. It just turned out to be that way.

Read the entire interview from Ultimate-Guitar.com.