Alexi was pretty much single-handedly responsible for getting me into metal. I love this man's work. R.I.P.

Much respect to Alexi Laiho. Saddens me that I will never see them playing again. Rest in peace Wild Child.

The thing most people underestimate is, that alexi plays all of his guitar work with full distortion and full volume. Most guitarsists switch to the neck pickup for solos and/or put some effects on it because full distortion is not forgiving you any mistakes when playing lead and soli. Which you can hear when you see recordings of alexi live, you can hear every mistake that he makes...which makes it more impressive how often you cannot hear a mistake. It boggles my mind how alexi plays so clean with his setup

Haven't heard this one in 13 years! Children of Bodom - Downfall is another great one!

If youre still interested in this band- maybe try Downfall

Alexi Laiho was so talented man. He has what Chuck Schuldiner has. Great storytelling with riffs and solos..
That was a really bad year for rock metal community  Sean Reinert, Sean Malone , Eddie Van Halen, Neil Peart , Riley Gale(He was so young too). All of them left good music behind them. Respect..

Sixpounder, Angels Don't Kill, Trashed, Lost, and Strungout. You gotta do more. Shred In Peace Alexi

I read so many yt comments in the last week, saying that Alexi made them start to play guitar. What a great legacy. Although I already played guitar when I was introduced to CoB, he really blew my mind and was a huge inspiration. I just couldn't grasp that it was humanly possible to play that stuff  (was the first guitar shred  I heard) and I don't know if I'd still play if it was not for him. I wanted to be able to do that, too, and that goal kept me going, which is a important aspect in learning an instrument, in my opinion. I'm sure that because of him the world gained some great guitarrists (not including me, but maybe I'll get there some day :) ) I especially like CoBs neoclassical inspired songs, like their self titled song Children of Bodom. It's so much fun to play, too. I had to ride the bus for about 45 min to school and the Mp3 players memory capacity back in the day weren't exactly huge (I think my first one had like 256mb :D)  so it was pretty much packed with CoB songs in my case. I wonder how many hundreds of times I listened to the Hatebreeder album back then. I really grew up with CoB, so incredibly  sad that he's gone.

Edit: Regarding Alexis inspirations: He does a lot of whammy bar stuff and mentions Steve Vai as an inspiration for that. Also Yngwie Malsteen I think, which explaines the  neoclassical figures he often used, especially in the first 2 albums. He also was in a Death cover band, I think. And he said that he also listens to just pop music, which is a rather bold statement, coming from a metal guy :D. They even covered Oops, I did it again, which is hilarious imo. So (80s)shred, death-metal and also pop roots, I think you can find all of that in one or another CoB song.

Yes they have a keyboardist. I'm a drummer and my favourite part is the keys haha

You mentioned City of Evil by Avenged Sevenfold. From an interview concerning the album:
"With the guitars, our inspiration at that point was we wanna play better than Children of Bodom. That was, like, the band we were looking up to at that time."
Bullet for my Valentine was supposed to be a warm-up for Bodom on their US tour 2006 but pulled out to join Rob Zombie.

R.I.P. Alexi Laiho...🤘🏻😞 Children Of Bodom was the first band I've ever listened to so they introduced me to metal. He is also the singer, btw. Please react to Children Of Bodom - Downfall.🤘🏻 One of the special features of COB has always been the duels respectively duets between Alexi and their keyboard player.👌🏻

I've been listening to Children of bodom for 11 years. One of my favorite tracks by them. I was just listening to this earlier today. R.I.P to Alexi Laiho

At the end of day, still one of my all time favourite guitarists

Children of Bodom was a huge influence to my musical tastes for a lot of high school. I haven't listened to them in a long time but see Alexi pass made me go an revisit them a bit. They always have incredible melodic guitar and keyboard solos.

Listen to kissing the shadows

I saw them live back in 2006. The energy and stage presence of the whole band and Alexi was OUT OF THIS WORLD. He was born for metal. Rest in Peace legend!

RIP Alexi. A huge influence on the metal community. You should check out some Dark Tranquility for some melodic metal.

Children of Bodom's keyboardist has an instrumental side project called Warmen. I would love to hear a reaction to any of the songs in their Salieri series. Thank you for this tribute.

One of the bands that really did heavily influenced metal-Core was At The Gates from Sweden they also really influenced a lot of industrial metal as well.

Alexi really was one of the best musicians in metal. The man really knew his way around a whammy bar too, lol. Knew exactly how to use it to add in a little flavor. Ya know, spice it up.
There's this thing CoB do a lot, idk what it's called, but I think you gotta lightly smack the whammy to make the sound.

Anyway lol, I think you're right about that Metalcore thing. I would not doubt that a ton of them are heavily influenced by late 90s/early 2000s Melodeath bands like CoB, In Flames and Dark Tranquillity.
And I think the reason the genre is so outcasted like a red-headed stepchild so to speak, is that they kinda feel like "the breakup song" of metal. Hell, even one of my favorite (and one of the only) Metalcore songs I listen to is called The End Of Heartache. Some of the lyrics: "I'll be waiting for the end of my broken heart", which about sums up half the genre lol.
A lot of dudes look down on showing vulnerable feelings like that in heavy music lmao.
The music itself is also kinda formulaic, too. It's usually a screamy, heavy verse that goes into a super melodic, catchy clean-sung chorus then you just repeat it. Really makes it feel like the most "commercial" of all the subgenres.
That's just my take on it. Honestly, I'm not so harsh on the genre anymore, in comparison to a couple of years ago in high school. The ol' "fuck that fake metal" phase lol.
All that being said... definitely still not fond of Deathcore though.

And lastly, they did have a keyboard player. He's pretty prominent in this song and most other songs. It's just the melodies tend to be very lead guitar-like or in the background.
I remember when I first started listening to this band, I couldn't tell which was doing which at some points.
But yeah, his "orchestra hit" effect is as much as a key factor in CoB as Alexi himself was.

You should definitely check out some more CoB, though.
You have the pre-Hate Crew Deathroll era stuff which is a little closer to the traditional European Melodeath sound. Stuff like Lake Bodom, Bed Of Razors and Silent Night, Bodom Night. A little more keyboard heavy with more neoclassical guitar riffs. The one part you might not be into is that the vocals are a little more rough around the edges. They're more Black Metal sounding. Like more dry & raspy.
Then you have the post-Hate Crew Deathroll stuff, which is closer to this song. Songs like Are You Dead Yet, Not My Funeral, This Road and I Worship Chaos all have that more modern metal sound.
I think a good middle ground to check out would be Glass Houses or Hexed off of their last album (also called Hexed). It's their modern sound, but more in the style of their early stuff.