In part 1 of my review of the Ugly World Tour, I mentioned that by the time headliners Children of Bodom took the stage, the show was already awesome. Septicflesh and Obscura proved to be excellent bands, and any show that has such great openers is only going to get better when the main bands come out.  That proved to be the case when Devin Townsend Project played a brilliant set.  And then at about 8:00 PM central, Children of Bodom came out to a thunderous ovation.

This was the first time I’ve seen CoB live, and I was not disappointed in any fashion.  Their setlist was almost perfect, as they played a nice mix of new material off their new record Relentless, Reckless, Forever, and older material from Hatebreeder and Follow the Reaper. 

Tossed in for good measure were some “hits” off Are You Dead Yet? and a handful of songs from the massive Hate Crew Deathroll.  No real complaints about the set list, since they played more older songs than I was expecting.

Some of the more particular highlights included the opening three songs, as the band began with the opener from Reckless, Relentless, Forever, “Not My Funeral,” and moved into “Bodom Beach Terror” and “Needled 24/7,” from Hate Crew Deathroll.  “Needled” is one of my top 5 Bodom songs and trust me when I say it is just as blistering, if not more, live than it is on CD.  Just an amazing song and it truly got the crowd going. 

The other dual song highlight was the song “Children of Bodom” which rolled right into the powerful “Hate Me!” By this point, the crowd was going bonkers, with multiple body surfers and mosh pits all over the venue floor.  Even following up those songs with the title track from Blooddrunk did little to stop the momentum.  A nice surprise was “Angels Don’t Kill” which is ridiculously heavy live, and the set closed with “Follow the Reaper” and “Downfall,” two more “old-school” favorites.

The band came out for an encore, of course, and played “Was it Worth It?” “Are You Dead Yet?” and finished off the night with their anthem, “Hate Crew Deathroll.”  The encore was a perfect group of songs, and their closer is pretty much the only song they ever will need to close with ever again.

I have mentioned in some other reviews of Bodom that their newer material is a bit weaker than their older stuff, and though it wasn’t bad by any means live, the change in sound was quite noticeable when they played the new songs and songs off Are You Dead Yet? The earlier material is driven by the keyboard, in true melodic death fashion, but the newer sound is more thrashy, with the keys contributing background sounds, as opposed to a primary sound.

That’s okay, because everything sounded great.  I will definitely make sure I see these guys again.  One quick thing I want to mention was that a few times, guitarist and frontman Alexi Laiho would walk back by keyboarder Janne Warman and the two would talk to each other while not even seemingly paying attention to what they were playing.  Just a fun sight to see, and impressive. 

So was it worth it?  Every penny.