Through broken bones, a suicide attempt, countless miles logged on the road, hundreds of gigs, and a million parties, Finnish shredder Alexi Laiho and his brothers in Children of Bodom have managed to crank out six studio albums of genre-blending, description-defying metal and cement themselves among the mainstays of the modern metal world. With a covers album, Skeletons in the Closet, released in September of 2009 to keep COB fans placated until the release of the follow-up to 2008’s Blooddrunk, COB went on a short Asian tour this past October, which saw them play Japan’s Loud Park Festival alongside other heavy metal heavyweights such as former tour mates Megadeth and Slayer. Following their appearance at Loud Park, COB touched down in Taipei to make their Taiwan debut, and Alexi sat down to chat with Fight magazine before a meet-and-greet with the band’s eager Taiwanese fans.

Fight: What led to the decision to do a covers album?

Alexi Laiho: Over the past 12 years we had come up with so many covers that we recorded. People came up to me asking ‘Where can I find this cover, where can I find that.’ They were all scattered apart in some shitty tribute albums or as bonus tracks. So I figured it would be a better idea if we took everything and put the whole shit on one disc. And right now we’re almost done touring anyway, so we’re going to start writing new music, so I think it’s a good idea to have something out there because we’re going to be kind of out of the picture for a while. So that’s why it’s good that we have the cover album reminding people that we still exist.

F: Are you fully recovered from the broken left shoulder you sustained earlier in the year?

AL: Oh yeah, totally. After the tour I went back home and just rested for about a week. I went to see a doctor, took an x-ray and everything, the shoulder. I had a broken rib too, but I didn’t care about that. It’s just a broken rib. It’s gonna heal no matter what. But I was more worried about my fuckin’ shoulder, because if something really gets fucked up that can be permanent. It can affect my, if not playing, then my performance on the stage. But it was all healed up and there was no permanent damage so, all good.

F: This wasn’t your first injury, you’ve had others before. It’s kind of a common theme with you. Does this worry you?

AL: Kind of, yeah. I don’t know what to say. I’m fuckin’ jinxed. The thing is, I think the majority of them are my own fault. I’ve been trying not to do stupid shit, you know. Also a couple of times I just had really shitty luck. What are you gonna do?

F: You guys have been through a lot of hard times with injuries, and you even attempted suicide. What has kept you going?

AL: Well, the music, pretty much. It sounds kind of stupid, I guess, to say it. But it’s true. Not stupid, but cliché.

F: Can you give people an idea of how hard you guys work to maintain your level of musicianship as individuals and as a group?

AL: I’m pretty much speaking for all of us but, for example, I’m just saying that I have fuckin’ given my life to this. I would give anything and everything for music and I would never fuckin’ let anything come between me and music. And that’s such a commitment that it’s easy to say out loud as opposed to actually do it and pull it off. You need to make a lot of fuckin’ sacrifices and you need to put your whole fuckin’ existence on the line to make it happen. That’s how much we wanted it. It takes a lot of sacrifices and a lot of fuckin’ work, but eventually it pays off.

F: Can you elaborate on some of the sacrifices you’ve made?

AL: A lot of girlfriends. School, I dropped out when I was 16. It comes to the point, you have to pretty much drop everything. For example, if you’re in the middle of making an album you just have to fuckin’ phase out everything else in your life, otherwise you’re not giving one hundred percent. If you’re not, then you’re gonna regret it for the rest of your life.

F: Your style is unlike anything that’s out there right now. How do you differentiate yourselves from the rest of the metal community?

AL: We’re not really trying to, that’s the thing. We never did. Everything that we’ve always done, it just came out spontaneously without really thinking about it. We never had the attitude that let’s try to be different or special or whatever the fuck. It just turned out that way. Now, when we’ve got six studio albums out, it’s the kind of situation that it’s not really healthy for anyone to start thinking about things like that. You just try to block that shit out and start from scratch and just see what happens.

F: The people in COB seem to enjoy a fairly healthy relationship with one another. How do you maintain that while spending so much time together?

AL: We were best friends; we grew up together anyway before the band and everything. Obviously that’s got a lot to do with it. We know each other so well if something annoys you that another dude’s doing, you can just fuckin’ say it straight out and that’s it. There’s not talking shit about each other behind their backs or anything like that. And we’re still good friends. We still have a good time on the road and I guess we’re just lucky enough to have that. Not every band has that thing.

F: Chart success has become something of a regular occurrence for you. Is that something you come to expect now with each new album or does it still surprise you?

AL: It does surprise me every once in a while whenever I have time to stop and think about it. But that’s another thing that you shouldn’t think too much about either because that’s gonna fuck with your head and that’s gonna affect your music. Sometimes, when you have time to take a breath, and just sit down and see what’s happened within the last ten years, it’s like Jesus fuckin’ Christ. What happened? This was not supposed to happen, but I’m still happy that it did. I guess just the fact that I’m working constantly and doing this thing constantly, that’s what it’s all about.

F: COB is constantly touring to new places. How do you feel when you’re heading out on tour and you know you’re going to be playing a place you’ve never played before?

AL: It’s always exciting. When you go on a tour you know there’s certain places that they’re gonna be good, and you know certain areas, you think it’s gonna be like, whatever. But then again sometimes those places that you have the lowest expectations of, they can actually surprise you. Like, wow, that was actually cool. It wasn’t cool last year. But coming to a new country that we’ve never played before, that’s a whole different thing because you really have no fuckin’ idea what to expect. Usually it’s either really bad or it fuckin’ rocks.

F: Have you started doing any writing for the next album?

AL: No, not really. I’ve got a bunch of shit in my head, a lot of ideas. I’m not one of those people who will write while touring. It’s just not the right environment for me. When I write music I need my peace and quiet. On the road your fuckin’ surrounded by these drunken psychopaths 24-7 so it’s just not happening. So what I usually do is that when I get back home, I’ve got a bunch of stuff in my head that I just sort of came up with but never acted on it, so I just grab a guitar and I try some of that stuff out. That’s how it usually starts. But when it comes to lyrics sometimes I write some down if I get any kind of ideas, like a sentence or a possible song title.

F: So do you prefer isolation when you write, or is it a collective thing with the band?

AL: It’s both. I usually do that by myself first. I go through some riffs and arrangements. The next day I go with the guys, then we work on that and we just jam on the riffs and before you know it, it becomes a song. And then I go back to my own little world of writing music and staying away forever. It’s sort of a loop that keeps on happening.

F: Do you have any idea as to what direction you want to take on the next album?

AL: Not really dude. I don’t want to plan on it and I still don’t know what I got stored up in here so we’ll just have to wait and see. It’s just too early to say.