Children of Bodom Announce New Album 'Hexed'

The Finnish melo-death titans are at it again.

It's always great to start the morning with some brand new album announcements and Children Of Bodom have kicked it off the right way by unveiling the details for their upcoming new album Hexed, which is set to arrive on March 8th via Nuclear Blast.

The album was recorded at Danger Johnny Studios in Finland with Mikko Karmila (Nightwish, Amorphis) and keyboards were overseen by Janne Wirman. Here's the tracklist:

01 – “The Road” 02 – “Under Grass And Clover” 03 – “Glass Houses” 04 – “Hecate’s Nightmare” 05 – “Kick In The Spleen” 06 – “Platitudes And Barren Words” 07 – “Hexed” 08 – “Relapse (The Nature Of My Crime)” 09 – “Say Never Look Back” 10 – “Soon Departed” 11 – “Knuckleduster” 12 – “I Worship Chaos” (live) 13 – “Morrigan” (live) 14 – “Knuckleduster” (remix)

Frontman/guitarist Alexi Laiho stated the following about the release:

People have said that the album is generally catchier. So I started thinking about that, perhaps the song structures are easier to grasp on initial listen. But there’s some crazy shit in there, almost progressive or at least technical. There are certain melodies across the album that could have come from jazz songs, although they’re completely metal with us, of course (laughs).

Bassist Henkka Blacksmith also commented:

For me, it has always been very hard to describe our new music. In a way it always feels familiar, but the new stuff also always surprises me. Here we have something that’s very Bodom, but somehow we haven’t done this kind of stuff maybe ever. Then again, someone said that there’s somehow similar vibe to what Follow the Reaper had. I don’t know. Anyway, we had a really hard time choosing the songs for the two videos, I guess that’s a positive problem.

Blacksmith had the following to say regarding the sick cover art by Denis Forkas:

For some years already I have wanted to try a different approach with our cover art. We are so used to digital art so that is really hard to do something else. Doing it all the way with computer is somewhat safe and convenient. This time we all agreed to try it old school.

We found this cool dude and gave him simple instructions. The cover has to be purple and the reaper has to be central. Half a year later we got his work, and with little tweaking, we have the cover of Hexed. It is very different from what we are used to, even the Reaper looks different, but at the same time very spooky.

Pre-orders for Hexed will go live on Friday, December 7th and the band has plans of announcing a U.S. tour in the spring with a European tour to follow in the summer. Stay tuned to this space for tour dates.