WARMEN, the brainchild of former CHILDREN OF BODOM keyboardist Janne “Warman” Wirman, has inked a deal with Reaper Entertainment. The band’s new album will arrive in 2023.

WARMEN started as a solo project of Wirman, and when the keyboardist wasn’t traveling the world with CHILDREN OF BODOM, he was regularly recording albums with his brother Antti Wirman )guitar), Jyri Helko )bass) and Mirka Rantanen ) drums; KOTIPELTO, ex-HEVISAURUS).  After the much-too-early end of CHILDREN OF BODOM and the tragic death of Alexi Laiho, Janne, together with Antti, found his way back to music through WARMEN.

Janne comments: “After the abrupt ending of CHILDREN OF BODOM, I wasn’t sure if I’ll ever make music again. We did a couple of song writing sessions last year with my brother and Jyri and I realized that I still have a lot of desire for music and together we wrote an album of exciting new stuff. We teamed up with Flori and Greg from the Reaper Entertainment, as I had worked with them before with great results, and knew they understood my past with BODOM and where we wanted to go next with WARMEN.”

Flori from Reaper Entertainment adds: “After all, it’s an open secret that our company name was a reference or tribute to CHILDREN OF BODOM. Greg and I were big fans and attended many of the band’s concerts together. In the process, we developed a great friendship with the band — but especially with Janne. When we saw on Facebook that Janne and Antti were working on new WARMEN songs, we just had to offer them our help. It’s a great honor for us that Janne accepted immediately and now we can eagerly wait for the new album.”

WARMEN‘s last official album, “First Of The Five Elements”, was initially released in 2014 via the crowdfunding platform PledgeMusic, which however ceased operations shortly thereafter. Since very few copies of the album hit the market, Reaper Entertainment is now re-releasing the album to shorten the wait for the new album. The direction of the material is classically inspired power metal, but, similar to CHILDREN OF BODOM, the focus of WARMEN is on the interplay of guitar and keyboard perfected by the Wirman brothers. In addition to ten original songs, cover versions of Madonna and Alice Cooper provide surprises, and for the vocals on “First Of The Five Elements”, the quartet was able to secure Pasi Rantanen) THUNDERSTONE), Jonna Kosonen and Laiho as guest musicians.

“First Of The Five Elements” will be re-released in March 2023, to be followed by a new WARMEN album later in the year.