Live: Children of Bodom and Abbath Worship Chaos in Baltimore

Children of Bodom went out on a Winter tour, bringing along with them the almighty Abbath and Exmortus. I got the chance to catch the tour at Soundstage in Baltimore Maryland. This was my first time seeing any of these bands live so I wasn\’t really sure what to expect. Needless to say that when I left the show I was genuinely debating driving to the next state to catch the next night of the tour because yes it was that good. Opening the night was a band called Oni. I had never heard of these guys but they came out and had a ton of fun on stage, I mean let\’s be real they had a xylophone how Fucking cool is that?! The music was easy to listen to and it was an overall fun set. I would really like to see these guys again for a preferably longer set. Next up was Exmortus. Just to mention here, as a woman I\’ve never had hair envy so bad in my life. Anyways, the energy from these guys was unreal start to finish. The best way to describe seeing Exmortus is a lot of headbanging, hair flying, guitar shredding overall badassery. I genuinely cannot wait to catch these guys again, they are way too much fun on stage and way too talented to miss. Abbath hits the stage next. This is one of the coolest live shows I\’ve ever seen. The whole stage presence and production is really badass. The face makeup and the outfits are over the top. It\’s an all around super metal production. The music itself is really unexpected, but in a good way. Every bit of their set is enjoyable, even if it is hard to see at certain points because of all the fog. While I was a bit surprised with the length of their set, the guys did one hell of a job with all of that time. They kept the crowd captivated (it was kind of hard to look away to be honest) and they played a ton of songs that the crowd seemed to be super into. I really would not mind seeing these guys again just preferably in a larger venue or an outside venue. Lastly, the great Children of Bodom took the stage. I really enjoyed the stage layout. Mostly the way the drum riser was off to the left (looking at the stage) and the keyboard player had his own section all to himself next to the right. It made everything seem to fit very well on the stage and feel more comfortable. The band seemed to work so extremely well together on stage and the crowd seemed to eat up every little move they made. For my first time seeing them it was crazy to see that. They knew how to keep control over every aspect of the show, not just the music, which sounded better live, may I add. Overall this was a phenomenal tour. You got a little bit of everything on the I Worship Chaos tour. While it may be over, there will be other opportunities to catch these bands and that you definitely should.

-Tera Ford