While the early work of Children Of Bodom is well-known by a lot of people, their newer albums haven’t impressed as much. Nevertheless the band continues and released Halo Of Blood this year. They were promoting this record in Europe and of course they visited The Netherlands as well. They brought Medeia and Insomnium with them. Another side note is that 013 announced that the show would start half an hour earlier because of all the construction works on the railroads. Because of this awesome decision, many people could see almost the whole show.

The first band of this evening was the melodic deathmetal band Medeia. The band showed that they know how to perform on stage, but the decision of adding this band to this tour was a little less successful. They had some problems with the sound and it was noticeable that some band members really weren’t happy about it. The band still managed to get some people going tonight and there was even a small mosh pit. Still, they couldn’t convince most people today, but when this band will play before a headliner that is closer to their own genre, they will be welcomed with open arms.

After the first band it was time for Insomnium, a band many people came for. Although this band is all about the guitars, it was a pity that most notes of both guitars weren’t audible for a long time. Because the bass was so overpowering, it was also quite difficult to properly hear the vocals. However, both guitars were audible during the last two songs, there was a very good balance between all the instruments and the whole band performed very well once again. In the beginning I wasn’t truly convinced by the live performance by this band, but they proved me wrong during the last few songs. It was a pity that the band couldn’t prove it all the time because of the sound problems, but they still showed enough to tempt me to see them again.

When Children Of Bodom started, I hoped that the band would also play a lot of older songs, because I believe those are better and I’m not very familiar with the last two records. After they started with a new song called “Transferance”, I was very happy to hear that “Silent Night, Bodom Night” and “Sixpounder” followed the opening song. Not only me, but many people seemed to enjoy the older songs more, which was shown by the heads banging and the amount of people in the moshpit. What was also noticeable after these songs, was that Alexi had a pretty good day and wasn’t completely wasted while he was playing. The band showed again that they can easily perform at the level they also play on their records. The crowd really enjoyed the show and the band seemed to do so as well.

Although this tour is all about their new record, they only played four songs from that record and alternated well between all of their records. They played their well-known hits like “Are You Dead Yet?”, “Everytime I Die” and “Downfall”, as well as some newer songs like “Halo Of Blood”, “Shovel Knockout” and “Blooddrunk”. It was a good variety of older and newer songs and most people loved it. It wasn’t a super clean performance by Alexi, but it was one of the best of the last few years that I’ve seen. They showed to be a true headliner and despite their newer records, I can advise everyone to go and see them.