This past February, members of legendary Finnish metal band CHILDREN OF BODOM played two shows celebrating the group’s music at the Tavastia club in Helsinki. The concerts, dubbed “Children Of Bodom – A Celebration Of Music”, featured original CHILDREN OF BODOM members, bassist Henkka Seppälä, keyboardist Janne Wirman, drummer Jaska Raatikainen and early guitarist Alexander Kuoppala, along with longtime friend Samy Elbanna, known from the band LOST SOCIETY, paying tribute to CHILDREN OF BODOM guitarist/vocalist and main songwriter Alexi Laiho, who passed away on December 29, 2020 in his home in Helsinki, Finland. He died of alcohol-induced degeneration of the liver and pancreas connective tissue. Furthermore, Laiho had a cocktail of painkillers, opioids and insomnia medication in his system. He had suffered from long-term health issues leading up to his death.

In a new interview with Ed Hack of This Day In Metal, Wirman was asked why now was the right time for the CHILDREN OF BODOM to regroup and honor Laiho in this way. He responded: “We’ve gotten some requests and we’ve said ‘no’ to everything. But then this one guy, who is now our booking agent, from Austria, Dominik, he contacted us and he was convincing enough. Like, ‘Guys, I have so many requests for BODOM shows.’ And we replied to him politely that we don’t have a band. We just have three guys and a legacy. And he goes, like, ‘Can I come to Helsinki and meet you?’ We were, like, ‘Okay, fine.’ And this guy flies to Helsinki and we meet him for dinner. He turns out to be a super-nice guy, someone we could work with.”

He continued: “Back in the day, BODOM, it was such a tight family. Everyone needed to kind of fit in — like a manager, booking agent, we always kind of needed to know these guys, that they really fit to the picture. So this guy kind of was very convincing. And this was a couple of years ago. And then we started thinking, like, ‘Okay, well, if we ever gonna play any shows, how are we gonna approach it? And then we hired our old manager Steve (Davis) back, ’cause Steve is a mastermind and a genius in his own really fucked up way. And he said that, ‘Guys, how we are gonna do this is that we’re gonna celebrate the music, ’cause that’s what we have — we have the music.’ And then that’s how we started unraveling. And, yeah, that’s where we are right now.”

Regarding Elbanna‘s performance at the two shows CHILDREN OF BODOM played at the Tavastia, Wirman said: “Dude, he was on fire. And he was so well practiced already when we had our first like band practice. Three months prior, four months prior to the shows, when we started practicing, he already knew everything, and I was just starting to remember, like, ‘How the fuck was this again?’ So he was so well prepared, so well practiced. He’s a young and enthusiastic little kid, and I love him. And he’s been practicing a lot. I think it takes a lot of practice for someone to be able to pull off everything that Alexi put on those albums. I think his performance was flawless. All the guitar solos, all the guitar leads were just perfect.

“Of course, we all know how fucking talented Alexi was, but that was something we were always in awe of, how he could play the most complex riff and then sing at the same time or shout or whatever,” Janne continued. “And I know there were some parts that were really difficult for Samy, but he pulled it off. I don’t even know, and I cannot even understand how much he had to have been practicing.”

Asked what is was like for him personally to perform the CHILDREN OF BODOM music again after so long, Janne said: “I had no idea. No one could have predicted… We had been rehearsing for months, and, like I said, I think Samy was the most confident player at the rehearsals. He was doing fine all the time, and I was still finding my way around the BODOM songs. And then I knew that we’re gonna do this video installation, and then Alexi is gonna speak and there’s gonna be all these photos and whatever. So going on stage the first night, I really had no idea if I’m gonna start crying. Is the whole audience gonna be crying when we go out? Literally from the moment we went on stage, we were all panicking back there, like, ‘What the fuck is gonna happen?’ And the crowd was kind of quiet during the video installation, which I understand, ’cause you wanna hear the dialogue. So the first 15 seconds I walked on stage, I had no idea what’s gonna fucking happen, but then I see the immediate crowd reaction to the music, and then I knew, like, ‘Fuck, this is gonna be a good time.’ And it was a good time.”

Elaborating on the musical chemistry between all the musicians who were on stage those two nights, Janne said:  ”I tried to kind of describe it as that something magical happened. ‘Cause no one knew what was gonna happen the first night. It could have been falling apart, and we could all just been crying and, like, ‘Why the fuck are we here?’ So something truly magical happened in terms also of how tight the band was. ‘Cause, if I’m honest, some of the rehearsals were not tight at all. So it was the crowd reaction. And sometimes you need that. And when the crowd makes you do your best, that’s when it’s beautiful.”

Wirman also addressed the possibility of further live performances in celebration of CHILDREN OF BODOM‘s music and Laiho. He said: “It was a very special event, and we knew that two nights was not gonna be enough kind of to feed the fan interest. We knew that a lot of people are gonna be asking for tickets. And I also panicked the last minute — I told the management, like, ‘Why don’t we extend this?’ But that’s how we had originally planned it — just two nights, and that’s it.”

Asked point blank if there is chance that we haven’t seen the last of CHILDREN OF BODOM‘s live shows, Janne said: “Yes, there is. I mean, we said that next year the celebration is gonna continue, so it’s gonna continue.”