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"It's way more tragic to see the light at the end of the tunnel, like if you know there's something better but you can't reach it."
- Ville Valo

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"It's not a happy album, I wouldn't say that," admits HIM frontman Ville Valo of the band's newest release Screamworks: Love In Theory And Practice. "But for the first time HIM does acknowledge that there is such a thing called 'happiness,' even if it is far, far away. This album is more a speculation on how to get there, — and that it is possible."

Such song titles as "Heartkiller" (the simultaneously gorgeous and intense first single), "Dying Song," and "Acoustic Funeral" ought to allay any fan fears, even if the album opens with the inviting and intriguing "In Venere Veritas" — loosely Latin for "In Love There Is Truth." Still, Valo recognizes that even the emotional expansion from the full-brooding tone of the band's breakthrough albums Dark Light (2005) and Venus Doom (2007), along with changes in his own life, might be of concern to some.

"I've overheard similar sorts of things," he says. "Somebody said somewhere that sobriety doesn't suit me. So I guess I looked better to them when I was fucked up and miserable and terrible. People need a Baudelaire or Bukowski to live the pain for them. Well, easier said than done."

The easy way has never been the way for HIM. Formed by Valo, lead guitarist Mikko "Linde" Lindström, and bassist Mikko "Migé" Paananen when they were teenagers in Helsinki, Finland, and rounded out by long-time drummer Mika "Gas" Karppinen and keyboardist Janne "Burton" Puurtinen, the quintet has been ever seeking to expand its artistic and emotional horizons. That has been the manifesto from the start, and in the course of what is now an impressive body of work with seven albums, it has made HIM one of the global superstar acts of rock.

Following a 1996 Finland-only EP (the now-collector's item 666 Ways To Love: Prologue), HIM exploded in Europe with the 1997 debut album, Greatest Love Songs Vol. 666 — the titles of both releases tipping off a playfully tongue-in-cheek approach to hard-rock images and assumptions. A few years later, Razorblade Romance put the band firmly in the top ranks of European rock, hitting No. 1 in Germany as well as Finland.

At the same time, the group entered the American market with a Razorblade Romance reissue and the album Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights (again a huge hit at home and on the continent). HIM also introduced the now-familiar heartagram logo with Razorblade Romance. Love Metal, in 2003, featured such now-staple anthems as "The Funeral Of Hearts" and "Buried Alive By Love." Dark Light broke open the U.S. with a Top 20 debut, building the following further with the rock hits "Wings Of A Butterfly" and "Killing Loneliness," as well as major touring and such high-profile appearances at the Download Festival — ultimately making HIM the first Finnish band to score a gold record in the U.S. Venus Doom maintained the rising trajectory with such hits as "The Kiss Of Dawn" and "Passion's Killing Floor" (featured on the Transformers soundtrack).

Through it all, HIM has sought its own sound, a mix of dark yearning and dense sonic tapestries, but cut with tenderness, vulnerability, and that ever-present (if sometimes buried) self-deprecating slyness.

But even by its own high standards, HIM has brought new senses of melody and, yes, humor to the Screamworks proceedings.

"The whole point of the album, what I was going for, is what I call melancholic levity," Valo says. "It's the kind of hopeful 'tragic-ness' that Depeche Mode does really well. When they play 'Enjoy The Silence,' which is one of my favorite songs, it's a really sad song but it makes you dance. That was my idea for the album rather than the gloomy-doomy stuff of the past."

However, he notes, "it's way more tragic to see the light at the end of the tunnel, like if you know there's something better but you can't reach it. There's the urgency that there are things we want on a personal and spiritual level, that there is a possibility of swimming to shore, so to speak, but the beach is very far away and filled with natives with spears and shotguns. It's like the old torture method when you're in shackles and chains, tied to four horses dragging you into four directions to tear you apart. That's the vibe I wanted for this album."

There, does that make you feel better?

Produced by Matt Squire (Panic At the Disco!, Taking Back Sunday, Boys Like Girls) in a set of intensive Los Angeles sessions, Screamworks brings new sonic and emotional vistas to the explosive, supple ensemble. With Squire's support, they sought to use those talents to reconnect with some of the influences that made Valo an artist in the first place and, in the process, bring their music into new places.

"Matt and I were born in the same year, 1976, so we grew up listening to similar kinds of music and we were able to reference the same things," Valo says. "Like, 'We need that Top Gun thing there. That Bonnie Tyler thing there. That Cult thing over there.' It was kind of like being in a musical candy shop. I wanted Guns N' Roses meets Depeche Mode, or A-Ha meets The Cult. I wanted the fragile sensibilities of melancholy pop with rock muscle — the Smiths meet Black Sabbath. But the band has always been about contrasts in sound and we've been so fragmented in our tastes. It's great to include all our influences in the album rather than be a racehorse with blinders on just going straight."

It all helped him sort through and express the things he'd been going through in his own personal growth.

"One of the things I felt, probably because of the sobriety, is that my addiction had to be the album — work 24/7 on the music. That means there's a sense of catharsis, letting everything be laid bare, as naked as you can be on the musical level. There's nothing to lose, really. If I'm being honest, you can say you don't like it and that's fine. Let's just say the album doesn't lack in honesty. And by that I mean all the musical influences and lyrics, all the personal stories that are hidden within the lyrical mess, are true to me."

That's the case right from the start with the compelling opening song "In Venere Veritas" — the title a pointed play on the famous phrase "In Vino Veritas" (in wine there is truth).

"When the album was mastered we realized there's no better way to start than with the lyrics 'Let's fall apart together now,' and then the band just falling in so strongly," he says. "It contains the essence of Screamworks in six seconds, the sense that we will fall apart eventually. Everybody will. People are fragile and will wither away and die eventually, so why not do it together? It's very romantic in my mind — let's grow old together, but taken a step further. There's no sense of irony. It's not 'Let's kill ourselves and be messed up,' but 'Let's celebrate that we are still here!' Pain is to be shared. Everyone feels that. Listening to a good rock record gets the heart pumping. That was my medication when I was a kid. I'd put on a KISS album or Black Sabbath and cleanse my mind of the things that were bugging me."

Continuing with "Scared To Death," ("probably the most Morrissey-esque thing I've written," Valo says) and the unexpected twists of "Heartkiller," ("Our reference was the theme for Knight Rider with David Hasselhoff, laughing about our bad taste, and not afraid to use what we grew up with"), the album is clearly full of surprises. "Dying Song" is an experiment influenced by Interpol, the Cure's Disintegration and Jane's Addiction's Ritual de lo Habitual. "Love The Hardest Way" references Billy Idol in the music and Baudelaire in the lyrics.

Between those two comes the soaring "Disarm Me (With Your Loneliness)," a song that found Valo baring the contrasts and contradictions at the core of Screamworks — long before he was consciously aware of them himself.

"That's a kooky one," he says. "I started writing it back in 2001, but it never felt right until now. Sometimes you write things down that you're yet to experience and then find yourself in things you wrote. That's how this felt. Everyone in the band loves it; it's one of those classic rock ballads. We never had one in the past. The album is all up-tempo, but then this and 'Acoustic Funeral' are more ballady. I love the Aerosmith vibe of that — Steven Tyler meeting the Mad Hatter. Or Bon Jovi's 'Bed Of Roses' directed by Tim Burton…Keeping it more surreal, more left of center."

With "Katherine Wheel," the band manages to mix literal inspiration from the tale of St. Catherine of Alexandria, and the torture device tied to her miracle and martyrdom, and filter it through both the Romantic poets and Iron Maiden, who of course took their name from a notorious torture device, all to explore the notion of excess and insatiable urges.

"'You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.' William Blake said that," Valo notes. "I'm that kind of person to a fault. I did that in my personal life, and I don't mean that I would test how many oranges I could eat."

And then he swings from "In The Arms Of Rain," and its sentimental memory of running in summer storms with his brother in their youth, to the examination of the fragile walls we build around ourselves in "Shatter Me With Hope" to "Acoustic Funeral (For Love in Limbo)," which finds the common ground between Black Sabbath (an explicit nod to that band's "Electric Funeral" and T.S. Elliot with its "not with a bang but a whimper"), as well as Depeche Mode and Neil Young's wistful "Long May You Run."

The emotional center point may be with "Ode To Solitude," in which Valo says he's reconciling his new approach to life without abandoning his "old friend" solitude.

"I need to break from you dear solitude," he says. "You have been a wonderful companion all these years but I have to open the door to the world. Robert Lowell, an American poet, came up with the line that the light at the end of the tunnel is the light of an oncoming train. That's the classic saying for pessimists, the dry humor of appreciating hope. That's key to the whole album. We do have a light at the end of the tunnel and whether it is an oncoming train or not, we do have a few seconds to enjoy it before it hits us. That's my way of celebrating life."

http://www.houseofblues.com/artistfeatures/artistofmonth/1004him/

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