I love the genre of Melodic Death Metal. The brutality combined with melody nature of it always seems to do something for me, no matter what. One of the most acclaimed albums in the genre is
Children Of Bodom's second effort,
Hatebreeder, but I never could get into that album, it just seemed sub-standard. And re-listening to it over and over, I realised that it was.
In case you don't know what the album sounds like, it's pretty much your standard 'extreme power Metal' - a brand of melodic death Metal where the 'melodic' parts are reminiscent of power Metal. Basically, throw fast drumming, melodic riffs, shredded guitar solos, neo-classical keyboards and harsh screamed vocals into a melting pot and you have
Hatebreeder.
A large part of
Hatebreeder is the solos. Every solo section on the album follows the same pattern - guitar first, then keyboard. The keyboards always play something incredibly similar to the guitar, so it's like a recycled version of the solo just heard, and combined with the keyboard's annoyingly chirpy tone the keyboard solos are very unenjoyable (such is best on display with the painful solo duel at the end of the title track). The guitar solos, sadly, aren't much better. Many of the guitar solos are just not as well composed as later works; there are no climaxes, the tone is flat and the shredding is directionless (listen to the closing solo of 'Black Widow' to see what I mean). Also, considering there's a lengthy solo in each track and a lack of substantial diversity between them, there's just too much time spent soloing on
Hatebreeder overall.
Regarding the keyboard, there are parts of the album where Janne plays (on his own, the rest of the band stops) something 'atmospheric' with his keys. Sometimes these will appear flat bang in the middle of songs, for example, the 'atmospheric' keyboard line which comes in at 1:53 of 'Silent Night, Bodom Night'; it hurts the momentum of the song (which was going good) while adding nothing to it in the process. The atmospheric parts try to make things sound eerie, but with all the cheesy, happy sounding riffs throughout the album (more on that later), it doesn't work at all. The intro to 'Bed Of Razors' is another example - they tried to make it dark and atmospheric, but due to its catchy nature it fails to create the desired cold atmosphere. Another example is 'Downfall', it just sounds silly.
The riff work on this album is mediocre. The main problem here is that many of the melodic riffs sound incredibly cheesy and thin. For example, the part from 2:03 - 2:35 of the title track sounds ridiculously happy, largely due to the guitar riff which sounds like a watered-down version of something you'd get in one of
Iron Maiden's cheesier songs. Another example is the opening melody in 'Towards Dead End' and the melodic riff at 0:22 of 'Children Of Bodom'; they sound childish and borderline nauseating. Another problem I have with the riff department is the fact this album lacks something all Extreme Metal albums should have - meaty, headbangable riffs. I honestly couldn't find one riff that was good for headbanging in all of
Hatebreeder, which is something I can't say about
Follow The Reaper or
Something Wild.
The rhythm section is unspectacular. The bass mostly follows the guitars and is barely audible, although there is an awesome bass lead in 'Warheart' and another gem at 2:53 - 3:00 in 'Children Of Bodom'. Apart from some well placed blast beats in a few songs, the drums do nothing of interest, sticking to samey patterns and fills the whole way through. While they can't save
Hatebreeder from the monstrosity it is, I can't say Laiho's vocals are bad. His screams are nice and brutal throughout, and there's even some variance with a lower, almost guttural growl he does occasionally.
And as for the songs themselves there's not much to say. All have very similar structures, tempos, melodies, solos and whatever else, making them hard to distinguish from one another and ultimately unmemorable. Some songs do stand out though, those being 'Warheart', 'Silent Night, Bodom Night' and 'Downfall'. Besides those though, no one song sounds better than any other.
Overall, despite some good parts and general catchiness, this album just fails in every way. The solos are poor, the attempts at creating atmposphere sound silly, the riffs generally sound incredibly cheesy, the rhythm section does nothing of interest and the songs lack diversity. If you're looking for some good 'Extreme Power Metal', try Bodom's
Follow The Reaper,
Something Wild or early
Norther and
Kalmah.
