Children Of Bodom - coming to a festival near you

Summer festival season is fast approaching, and Children Of Bodom's festival diary is filling up. Appearances have been confirmed so far at gatherings in the UK, Canada, Finland and Germany.

Download Festival, Donnington Park, UK


The UK's premier rock music festival, held over 3 days in June. COB will make their appearance on Friday 10th. They will be supporting this one-off UK festival showing with a brand new single, the third to be drawn from their new, highly acclaimed Relentless Reckless Forever album (their seventh to date), which has already sold well in excess of 100,000 copies worldwide and has been certified gold in their home country of Finland.

The single in question is Shovel Knockout, and it will be available – via Spinefarm – both as a limited edition coloured vinyl 7” plus a digital download; the bonus material will be drawn from COB keyboard player Janne Warman’s solo recordings, some of which feature Alexi as special guest.

Heavy MTL


This Canadian festival takes place in Montréal, Québec. The first edition of the intense two-day celebration of heavy music was in June 2008 and included bands such as Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Disturbed, Three Days Grace, Dethklok, Anthrax, Type O Negative, Mastodon, and many others. Heavy MTL 2011 will be held on July 23rd and 24th in the beautiful setting of Parc Jean-Drapeau at Île Saint-Hélène, located just off the island of Montréal.

Heavy TO

The success of HEAVY MTL has prompted the launch of a new event - HEAVY TO. This takes place on the same weekend as Heavy MTL, at Downsview Park, located on the north end of Toronto.

Children Of Bodom always get a very enthusiastic reception from their Canadian fans. In a recent interview with hellbound.ca Alexi commented that "It’s always great. And I’m just not saying it. It’s definitely always one of the highlights of playing the whole world, the Canadian dates. The crowds over there are just so fucking incredible, we’re always really looking forward to it." The band will be at Heavy TO on July 23, and Heavy MTL on July 24.

Qstock, Oulu, Finland


Established in 2006, Qstock is a rock music festival held in July in Kuusisaari, in the city of Oulu in Northern Finland. The two-day festival has a capacity of 22 000 visitors and has sold out consistently for the past five years. Its previous incarnation as the Kuusrock Festival in the '70s and '80 played host to bands such as Alice Cooper, Procol Harum, Scorpions, Death Angel and Iron Maiden. The dates for this year's festival are 29th-30th July, and this will be Children Of Bodom's only Finnish summer gig this year.

Wacken Open Air, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany


First held in 1990 as a small event for local German bands, Wacken has achieved almost legendary status as a heavy metal music festival, and is a major event on the European metal festival calendar. Taking place this year on 5th-7th August, the festival is already sold out.