Death Metal Project Bodom After Midnight Discuss Searing EP ‘Paint the Sky with Blood'

Drummer Waltteri Väyrynen, also part of U.K. metal veterans Paradise Lost, talks about working with late Finnish metal great Alexi Laiho

- ANURAG TAGAT

As far as short-lived projects go, European melodic death metal band Bodom After Midnight will have a bittersweet place in history. In early 2020, guitarist-vocalist Alexi Laiho and guitarist Daniel Freyberg announced the breakaway group, even as they drew the curtain on famed extreme metal band Children of Bodom with a final performance in December 2019.

Bodom After Midnight – completed by Finnish drummer Waltteri Väyrynen, bassist Mitja Toivonen and live keyboardist Vili Itäpelto – then became the new vehicle for the Finnish musicians. Even as they were chipping away at their debut full-length album, Laiho passed away due to health complications in December 2020. The project has now bowed out with a handful of material on their three-track EP Paint the Sky with Blood, released on April 23rd via Napalm Records. Drummer Väyrynen terms it “a strange feeling” to know that the EP will be their first and last release. He adds, “But I’m happy to get these songs out. This EP is always going to be a very important release for me.”

Invited on board via Freyberg in late 2019 when the disintegration of Children of Bodom was imminent, Väyrynen tells