OOPS THEY DID IT AGAIN - ALEXI LAIHO COMES OUT OF THE COVERS CLOSET

Ever since the Japanese version of Children Of Bodom's debut 'Something Wild' included a cover of Sepultura's 'Mass Hypnosis', Bodom albums have come with bonus covers. It's become part of the anticipation, which cover will they do now? From covering legendary Finnish thrashers Stone on 'Hatebreeder' to WASP on 'Follow The Reaper' and Poison on 'Are You Dead Yet?'. And now for all of you who haven't managed to track down deluxe reissues or Japanese imports Spinefarm have collected the good, the bad and the downright ugly (ahem Britney Spears) from Bodom's cover collection onto one compilation. I tracked down master of ceremonies and king of karaoke Alexi Laiho to dust of the skeletons in his closet.

Ok, so Spinefarm have just collected all the covers you've ever recorded for a kinda 'Best Of' collection, including songs by Iron Maiden, Slayer, Wasp, Billy Idol and, erm, Britney Spears. Of all the songs on that album, which are your favourites.
“Well my favourite is, for example, we just recorded two extra songs for the album about two months ago so one of them is a Pat Benatar song, 'Hell Is For Children'. It's one of my favourites and I don't know, I guess you have to love the Britney Spears cover.”

So, you're telling me you like singing like a woman?
“Well, I mean when I've had a couple of beers its all good.”

Pat Benatar is a surprising choice. She's criminally underrated outside of North America, are you sure you wouldn't have rather done something by Lita Ford?
“I've been a fan of Pat Benatar for a long time, she has so many awesome songs and she's a great singer and actually a lot of her songs have potential to be badass metal songs, well that's what I hear anyway. Like the first time when I heard 'Hell Is For Children' it was like man we have to cover this as a metal version. It's weird, no one talks about Pat Benatar, I guess she just wasn't that popular outside the US, I've been a fan of her for a long time.”

When you cover a song, do you always try to add that tradmark Bodom touch, to change them slightly and make them more metal?
“Yeah, I mean that's kind of the whole point, we want to make it different. There are a couple of exceptions, like for example the Suicidal Tendencies cover, there's nothing much we can do about it. It's pretty much like the original version but we added stuff here and there but usually we like to throw in stuff that wasn't on the original and fuck around with it as well, just make it sound like Children Of Bodom.”

But metal is a serious business Alexi. Some fans will say there is no room for 'comedy' covers albums in metal!
“Well I'm saying 'chill the fuck out'. We not taking it all too seriously, obviously I take metal seriously but metal is about fun too so there are definitely covers on there that are just for a laugh you know. But yeah, it's just who we are, we like to have fun, we like to have a laugh, we're not afraid to show that to anybody.”

Ok, so of all the songs on that album, which is the one that was most fun to record, which is the song that gets you up on the dancefloor or the first one you do at metal karaoke, which we all know if like a national pastime in Finland?
“Well, if you put it that way it would probably be 'Rebel Yell'. It turned out to be OK actually, I wasn't sure if you would work out but it was fine and I know for a fact that I've been singing that on karaoke when I'm drunk. And one of my favourites is the Ramones song, 'Someone Put Something In My Drink'. I dunno, I just always loved Ramones and that song is from their '80s era, which a lot of people don't like. But I did and I don't know, it's just a cool song with lyrics we can relate to. It turned out really good so it's definitely one of my favourites.”

Two of the songs on this album are from your favourite movie, tell us about that?
“Oh yeah, from 'The Big Lebowski'. Yeah this movie, it's like me and Janne, our keyboard player's favourite movie and usually on our tour bus it's like looping over and over in the DVD player and so the Creedence song, that was from that movie and also Kenny Rogers, that was in there as well, so we took two songs from that movie.”

Did that film also inspire the hilarious promo photos you took for this album, all of your in Hawaiian shirts, drinking white russians?
“Well the thing is, we realised we're gonna have to take some photos for the cover album, so I mean, this is not like a serious thing, it's like a covers album so we thought we should just do something a little stupid for the photos as well. I don't how the whole Miami Vice thing came about, but I think the pictures are pretty funny though.”

Would you ever consider doing a concert just of covers, you could even dress up like the original artists? I can imagine you dressed as Pat Benatar!
“Maybe, I'm sure it would be fun, it would be a lot of fun.”

Or you could do a video? If you could, which song would you do and what would the concept be?
“Maybe the Ramones and it would just be us fucking around acting super drunk I guess. That would be the concept.”

Most of these songs have been released before, like the Iron Maiden one, how did that come about?
“Well, I mean a lot of these songs, they were meant for tribute albums and we were asked to do an Iron Maiden tribute album and we just thought why the fuck not. It's a cool song, I always liked it so I thought why don't we do that [Aces High]. I dunno it turned out to be cool, it's pretty fast so it suited us in a way.”

Those Nuclear Blast tribute albums are always fun, but I've always wondered how people chose their songs. For example did you have to ring up Sonata Arctica or Opeth and be like, fuck you, we chose that song, choose something else?
“No, no, the thing is with these tribute albums we usually choose the songs that aren't the most obvious choice, so I dunno it's like when we asked to do this Slayer tribute album thing it was like everyone's gonna do 'Reign In Blood' or something like that so we wanted to do something different, so we thought, OK we're gonna do 'Silent Scream' and that was like not taken so that was cool.”

Ok, down to my favourites, I'm a sucker for Poison, what made you choose to do 'Talk Dirty To Me'?
“Well that's the kinda stuff I grew up with. My older sister, she was totally into that whole hair metal thing and when I was young I would always listen to her tapes, you know, Poison, Skid Row, Guns N Roses, Motley Crue, that whole thing and I still love that stuff. I can't help it, it's metal. I dunno Poison, there a great part of music and again it was a song that was pretty unpredictable. Not many people were expecting that.”

So, what's next, will there be 'Skeletons Part 2”. What will you cover next?
“I haven't really thought about that since we just covered those two new ones, the Pat Benatar and Trust. There are so many great songs out there, so to pick one and cover it, I'm sure would be no problem.”

Ok, then since we're talking about tribute albums, if there were to be a tribute to Bodom, who would you like to be on it?
“Ai, ai, ai. Ok, Well I would definitely like to have Andrew WK cover one of our songs, I'm sure that would be fucking funny. And maybe, well alright I'd love to hear Poison cover one of our songs and yeah why the hell not, Britney.”

God, which one would she do?
“I dunno, probably the fastest and the meanest and the most chaotic song we have. But I'm sure whatever it is would be pretty interesting.”

Finally, you covered a song by the old Finnish metal band Stone, which featured Roope Latvala, before he joined COB. You recorded that before he joined, so did you know how he felt about that?
“That was recorded like ten years ago. I was asking him one time, and he was just mumbling something, as usual. He was like 'yeah I heard it' or whatever. But I guess he thought it was cool at the time.”

Do you hope this should encourage your fans to go back and check out some decent old school Finnish thrash?
“I think they should, especially the first two albums if you're into thrash, you should definitely check them out.”

So, when will we hear these live then? Any plans to incorporate them into your setlist?
“I dunno yet, we've not decided, we're gonna be out touring until November and then we've been out there about two years, so we're done touring for now, but I dunno maybe we'll take one of the covers and to include it on the setlist. Maybe again the Ramones one, that would be pretty easy to do.”