 
When I see absolutely anything at all pop up from
this phenomenal band always plants one of those
huge Cheshire cat smiles across my face as me
and this band go way back, I’ve been listening
to them since I was 11 years old and they have
been my favourite band ever since. I haven’t
had a bad word to say about any of their albums
to dates with such memorable releases as “Are
You Dead Yet?”, “Follow The Reaper”,
“Blooddrunk” amongst many MANY more,
when their last effort "Relentless Reckless
Forever" was released I was actually quite
highly critical of it at first giving it not the
best review as I felt at first it appeared a bit
more forced where as past albums just seemed to
flow, but then the bastard grew on me rendering
all my previous thoughts and opinions on the album
worthless.
Not this time around though do I have any remotely
negative thoughts, from the get go this is a fully
fledged strong Bodom release, the high octane
pace of “Waste of Skin” followed up
with the calm sinister nature displayed in “Scream
For Silence” and sheer brutality blasting
out of title track “Halo of Blood”.
There are literally no complaints here from my
end, what I thought was the problem with “Relentless
Reckless Forever” was that there was a bit
less brutality and that they were trying too hard
to push the musical elements together like the
guitarwork didn’t fit alongside the drumming
when then didn’t gel alongside the vocal
work, after a while that faded away and I could
see the beauty of it but I’m just extremely
glad they’ve stuck religiously to their
longstanding edge with this one making "Halo
of Blood" a tremendous success.
So that’s another tally on the list of fantastically
composed albums to chalk up for the Finnish superheroes
of melodic death metal Children of Bodom, and
another release the band has kept me as one of
their most loyal fans here to the next 11 years
and another 8 studio albums!
5/5
Review by James Webb
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