Incoming: Children of Bodom at the Uptown

Finland’s best metal band will be drinking blood from your mom’s hollowed-out skull Saturday, April 29, at the Uptown. Metaphorically speaking.

Children of Bodom is a Finnish metal band that’s been around since 1993. They took their name from a multiple homicide in the 1960s at Finnland’s Lake Bodom, which I guess was big news over there. Frontman Alexi Laiho is their draw – an old-school shredder with fingers that move down the fretboard like skittering spider legs. Laiho’s one of those players that’s become a fixture in guitar magazines that run tabulature in the back pages. I remember him getting pimped out by Guitar World in the mid-90s when he was still a kid virtuoso and I was still a kid who thought he could play guitar. Some of their records probably belong in the essential metal album collection, but it seems like lately they’ve run out of stuff to say. Tickets are $36 in advance and $40 the day of the show.

Here’s Laiho riding the bounty of Ukko’s sword. If you don’t know what that means, maybe it’s time you brushed up on your Finnish pagan mythology.