Melodic Death Metal legends Children of Bodom will release their highly-anticipated new album Hexed on March 8, 2019 via Nuclear Blast Records. Hexed will be available for pre-order starting December 7th with a single expected soon. Deins Forkas to create the album artwork. Henkka commented on the cover: “For some years I’ve wanted to try a different approach with our cover art. We are so used to digital art, so it’s really hard to do something else. Doing it completely with a computer is somewhat safe and convenient. This time we all agreed to try going 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 now 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.”
Alexi Laiho commented:
“People have said that this 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 Seppälä (a.k.a. Henkka T. Blacksmith) comments:
“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, possibly ever. Then again, someone said that there’s a somewhat similar vibe to what ‘Follow The Reaper’ had. I don’t know. Anyway, we had a really hard time choosing the songs for the videos. I guess that’s a positive problem to have.”
Hexed was co-produced by Mikko Karmila and the band, except for the keyboards, which Janne Wirman recorded keyboards at Beyond Abilities Studios. The album was mixed and mastered at Finnvox Studios in Helsinki, Finland.
Hexed track listing:
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)