After the surprisingly well played out support from Finnish country-men Ensiferum, main act Children Of Bodom had something to live up to.
Old experience tell me that this should be no problem at all, as the Children have gone down as one of the wildest and most aggressive live-acts around in my book.
However…

The band took the safe and well-trodden path to setlist creation by following the simple rule “first song on the new album = first song at the show”.
I admit that Not My Funeral has a riff that works pretty well, and even though I have heard that Relentless Reckless Forever (which is the title of the album in case you didn’t know) have sold incredibly well, I have still not had the time to delve into it, and so starting the show of with a completely unknown song wasn’t the best way to go. In my opinion.
Actually, not only was it the setlist which felt like taking the safe path, the whole show was feeling uninspired as if the band was only running on half an engine. What was wrong here, what had happened to the band which holds the record at Wacken for most crowd-surfers during a single show?
I don’t know, but I do know that the audience surely wasn’t going to give it any less than they were expected to; everyone was really into things straight from the get-go; everyone was shouting and screaming, and displaying mystic hand-signals in honour of the nether-regions.

Actually, for the most part, and especially so in the beginning, it was said crowd who held the show together; they were thrashing and shouting, moshing and circle-pitting away like there was no tomorrow.
No big surprise then that Alexi Laiho commented that they were incredibly happy to finally play a headliner show here in Copenhagen; with a crowd like this, who wouldn’t be?
And then something finally happened about halfway through the set, when they had played all but one of the new tracks they had lined up for the night and some of the old shit came crawling out of the woodwork, the atmosphere changed; people watching became even wilder, and even though the band didn’t really change the way they performed, you could hear a direct change in the way Laiho spoke between songs; gone were the sweet comments about how swell it was to be here, and in came fuck you, fuck this and fuck that. A whole fucking lot of that was going ‘round.
Song-ways things were picking up as well, at least to this reporter’s ears; now we could feast upon C.O.B. classics such as Hate Me!, Follow The Reaper and Downfall, all of which were a welcome change to the (almost) all new set we had been given so far.

In all fairness, C.O.B. did try on a few new things as well; the stage setup was radically different from what I have seen before, probably to fit the imagery of the new album better, and this was the first time ever I believe that I saw Janne Wirman using two keyboards, one located on either side of the stage. Although, I don’t really get what the point was with this…

Now, I confess that this review makes the show sound pretty damn awful, but in reading this you must remember that I am comparing Children Of Bodom not to what other bands do, but to what I know and have seen that Children Of Bodom themselves are capable. What I mean to say is, a mediocre show from Children Of Bodom is still some way over the general average of bands out there.
And this was a mediocre Children Of Bodom show. It did lift off to a little bit of a higher ground halfway through, and I must also remember to point out Henkka Seppälä who was the only one who looked like he took this serious, but even so it only felt half-descent. I was entertained, and I will never tire of screaming along to Angels Don’t Kill, but I will not remember this particular show in a few days time…

Setlist:

Not My Funeral
Bodom Beach Terror
Needled 24/7
Ugly / Relentless Reckless Forever
Roundtrip To Hell And Back
In Your Face
Living Dead Beat
Children Of Bodom
Hate Me!
Blooddrunk
Shovel Knockout
Angels Don’t Kill
Follow The Reaper
Downfall
Was It Worth It?
Hate Crew Deathroll