Halo of Blood


Halo of Blood is the eighth studio album by Finnish melodic death metal band Children of Bodom. It was released on June 7, 2013 in Europe and June 11 in North America on Nuclear Blast Records. In Japan, the album was released by Marquee Inc. on May 29, 2013. This would be the last album with guitarist Roope Latvala before he got kicked out of the band in May 2015.

Production

Drummer Jaska Raatikainen posted on Facebook that the band has accumulated a number of songs for a new album. Raatikainen described the new material as dark and "also little black metal|'black' -ish." In an interview before the band's first show in India, keyboardist Janne Wirman revealed that the band currently had four songs written, with plans to enter the studio at the end of 2012. Wirman predicted a release around April or May 2013. In mid November 2012, it was announced that the band had started recording demos of new material.
In January 2013, it was revealed that frontman/guitarist Alexi Laiho was finishing writing lyrics, and that recording would commence in February. Two song titles were also revealed. On 19 March 2013, the album's title was announced as Halo of Blood, and a track listing and cover artwork were revealed.
Despite some resources say that Halo of Blood was "produced by Swedish producer Peter Tägtgren", this is not entirely correct. Here is what Children of Bodom's Janne Wirman said about it on September 14, 2017, in the interview with Noizr Zine:
"And I don’t know why it said Peter Tägtgren on the next album . The media wants to pick the name, and, as far as I know, Peter was there just to produce the vocals but then the media is like, "Oh, Peter is producing the album!" . And Peter did not produce the album. Mikko and we did, as we normally do".

Critical reception

The album received mostly positive reviews, with an aggregated score of 66/100 on Metacritic, indicating favorable reviews. It was considered a return to form for the band, garnering a warmer reception from fans than their previous three albums.

Track listing

Personnel

;Children of Bodom
;Production