Children of Bodom - Tokyo Warhearts - Live in Japan (2008)

If you're really into live albums and think you've heard it all? You really haven't heard the best until you pop this into your stereo. Finland's deadnight warriors, Children of Bodom, have definitely made one of the best live albums to date in European metal history, it's powerful, explosive and even some of the songs featured or played live are better than the originals. This album recorded Bodom's live shows in Tokyo, Japan in 1999. The set list were songs from their first two albums "Something Wild" and "Hatebreeder", this concert was to promote their 2nd release and so on. When a band promotes music material, they want to make sure it's a good job. I'm just going to say right off the bat that it's absolutely the best Bodom had to offer.

For one thing, the songs played on this live album are actually better than the original ones! The band added some new stuff into the songs that extend them a little and in most cases it improves the piece(s) further! An example of this would be the intro to "Touch Like An Angel of Death" where you get all caught up in passionate emotion with those juicy melodic solos and then it drops to the morbid and dark riffs that kick the melodic shit aside and jumps right into the pure madness and destruction! This all really adds to the explosive quality of this album!

There's just something about a live album that makes it sound so much better! Everything doesn't sound exactly like the album version which kind of adds a little twist to the music, a breath of fresh air. Hell, there's even a solo battle between Laiho and Warman which sound amazing because you get a taste of both the musicians' talents and skill. It's really overwhelming in a good way, you have all this music surrounding you and it can get stuck in your head for days. This album inspired me to play live at a venue one day, I'm sure it has affected most fans the same way, if you ever have that feeling then you instantly know that this album is for you. Buy this and you get the Tokyo Warhearts experience, even if you weren't there.