Children of Bodom – Skeletons In The Closet

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In a little over a year Children of Bodom have not recorded a new album. Rather they have compiled the large number of covers they’ve recorded onto one CD. What fans get out of this will depend entirely on how avid a collector they are. Of the seventeen tracks here fourteen have been released before. A couple (Don’t Stop At The Top, Talk Dirty To Me) only in Japan, but the rest at least once as b-sides on singles or EPs. Fans who haven’t collected those minor releases will enjoy a little over an hour of new music. Those who did have three to five songs to listen to. The brand new recordings are Anthrax’s Antisocial, Pat Benatar’s Hell Is For Children and lead track War Inside My Head, originally by Suicidal Tendencies. Some of them are awful (Looking Out My Back Door, Aces High), some are funny (Oops! I Did It Again), some are brilliant because they naturally fit Bodom’s style (Silent Scream, Mass Hypnosis) and some because they don’t (She Is Beautiful – even if the song is bad – Hell Is For Children, Don’t Stop At The Top), but what’s most disappointing is that the collection isn’t complete. The US version includes Ghost Riders In The Sky but lacks Andrew W.K.’s She Is Beautiful and Alice Cooper’s Bed of Nails (which is ruined at the end with a few over-fast choruses). King Diamond’s Waiting is a hidden track in Europe but a listed one in America. The Japanese version, unusually, misses four tracks (listed, that is), and all three are absent Shot In The Dark. So, great for non-single-collectors, less great otherwise, and disappointingly incomplete.

Written by Andy Lye
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