A studio in the Swedish village of Pärlby sat mostly empty for three weeks while five Finnish musicians recorded their third album without the producer they had hired. The band was Children of Bodom, and the album was Follow the Reaper, released in Finland on October 30, 2000 through Spinefarm Records. The producer, Peter Tägtgren of the band Hypocrisy, was supposed to shape the record but simply wasn't there yet.
Why the band changed producers
Why would a band hand its most important record to a producer who didn't show up? Children of Bodom had made their first two albums with Anssi Kippo, and bassist Henkka Seppälä said the switch was about one thing: they wanted a heavier sound than before. Tägtgren, known for his own extreme metal work, seemed like the man to deliver it. So the band set up in The Abyss studio and started tracking on their own.
When Tägtgren finally arrived, he jumped in at the vocal stage, advising on how the singing should sound, and then turned his attention to the keyboards. Janne Wirman's parts were complex, and the producer helped pick the right sound from roughly 500 options. That detail says a lot about the record: every layer mattered, and the keyboard sound was not an afterthought.
A turn toward power metal
The result was a shift. Follow the Reaper moved Children of Bodom seriously toward power metal, with neoclassical influences running through the guitar work. AllMusic described the music as black metal with the happiest keyboards in the genre, a description that captures the album's odd balance of aggression and melody. Some listeners compared Wirman's playing to Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and the songs moved through different tempos rather than settling into one speed.
The band's leader, Alexi Laiho, wrote every song, and the material gave the group a new live backbone. Three tracks in particular became set-list regulars: the title song, Everytime I Die, and the single Hate Me!, which had already appeared in May 2000. Even the deeper cut Mask of Sanity had a history, reworked from an early demo called Talking of the Trees recorded when the band was still called IneartheD.
A reputation that grew slowly
The album's reputation grew slowly and then firmly. In 2020, Loudwire noted that many fans considered Follow the Reaper the best Children of Bodom record, a striking claim for a band with a long discography. Three years later, Metal Hammer placed the album among the best metal releases of the 2000s. The record had become the one people argued for, the one that balanced the band's two instincts better than anything else.
What makes the album work is that it is a fusion with a clear leaning. The sound blended traditional heavy metal and extreme metal, but the traditional side won, letting the melodies breathe while the harshness stayed close underneath. The neoclassical guitar lines gave the songs a sense of drama, and the keyboards turned that drama into something almost playful. It was heavier than the band's past, just as Seppälä wanted, but not at the cost of the hooks.
Follow the Reaper runs just over 38 minutes, and it never overstays its welcome. The album was the moment Children of Bodom stopped being a promising extreme metal act and became a band with a signature sound. They had gambled on a producer who left them alone for three weeks, and the music they made in that empty studio ended up defining them.
They had gambled on a producer who left them alone for three weeks, and the music they made in that empty studio ended up defining them.