So anyone down here listens to this band?

Valo has said a new album, follow up to their latest 'Venus Doom' should be hopefully out in next year. Looking forward to it.

And then there's rumours that Fiona Apple and Ville Valo are going to do a duet for Tim Burton's new film. Although there's no official news yet, according to Digg:

"Yes you heard correct. Fiona Apple and the Finnish rocker will lay down a track for the new Tim Burton instant classic already "Alice in Wonderland" The song is rumored to be titled 'The Dark is Golden'. The duo will probably officially record the song next year. The film is due out 2010." http://digg.com/environme...urton_Film
Take that with a grain of salt, but it would still be cool if true.

Ps. Haters just ignore this topic and spare your comments for elsewhere thank you.

I do!

I consider HIM to be one of the best rock bands of the decade. They have a very unique sound and the lyrics are great too even though they pretty much always revolve around the same themes, love and death.

I haven't heard that rumour but it definately sounds interesting. With a voice like that it's no wonder that people want to do duets with Ville. He has also done quite a bit of lead and backing vocals for other finnish bands.

There's no doubt that some people really do enjoy hating this band. I believe the main reason for this is that some people just take the band's dark concept a bit too seriously. There's always some humour in whatever mr.Valo does.

btw, my name is also Ville

I enjoyed "Razoblade Romance" back in the day a lot and saw them live a few times back then. I din´t like the albums after that, though.
Villes version of "Summer Wine" last year (with Natalia Avelon) was great, though...

I like them too, but I don't have any of the complete albums...any suggestions on where I should begin?


oh and this...



sounds like its gonna be good

I've missed Fiona anyhow

thekidsgirl said:

Razorblade Romance is a good one to begin with and it's propably the easiest one to find too. after that I'd suggest everything except Dark Light.

mistymeadows said:

I thought Dark Light was supposed to be good?

thekidsgirl said:

Well there's a couple of good tracks on it, but I don't think it works very well as an album. To me it sounds like they were trying too hard to get some radio airplay in America. I like the fact that the music of HIM is a combination of metal and pop, but Dark Light is bit too light and poppy for my liking. If your more into the softer side of HIM I recommend their third album; Deep Shadows And Brilliant Highlights. It has some wonderful ballads like this one:

In Joy And Sorrow

That band is just a cash cow by now. Doing the same damn thing over and over again. The whole Bam Margera -connection and the Hot Topic -association isn't really working, they're definitely not what the band was originally about. "Dark Light" was pretty damn terrible, and "Venus Doom" fails at being "more experimental (although it seems to have its moments of implemented humour).

I'm not going to pretend though that I wouldn't enjoy the occasical single being played in public, or sometimes I watch a youtube of something like "Your Sweet 666" or "Buried Alive By Love", that stuff is alright. "In Joy and Sorrow" I sort of like too, it's reminiscent of traditional Finnish music. Ville Valo has been here for the last decade basically as big as Michael Jackson was in the 80s in the States.

Here's Valo covering real music:
http://www.youtube.com/wa...eKTUshcUHg
http://www.youtube.com/wa...re=related

Especially the latter is ace.
[Edited 10/31/08 11:03am]

ok, well I'll check out their earlier stuff mainly

I love HIM. I like Gothic stuff but most of the time the music sucks while the image is cool. HIM actually has good music.

My faves are Deep Shadows..., Dark Light, and Razorblade Romance. I wasn't feeling Venus Doom too much. It's the first HIM album I wasn't really crazy about.

Dark Light is a great record though. The title track is one of the best written/arranged songs EVER! THe melody is incredible on that track!

Dark Light was supposed to be the album that finally breaks the band into the US/global markets. It was HIM's first album to sell gold in the US but I think many would agree that it wasn't their best album.

I personally love Venus Doom, and think it was a well made tribute to their roots. It reminds me of Paradise Lost's "Gothic", another great album and a landmark in the gothic metal scene.

Some of my all time favourite HIM tracks are It's All Tears, Gone With The Sin and Pretending from the first three albums. I would so love to see Ville doing more solo stuff, like that with The Agents. He's a great songwriter, that we already know, but he's a great performer as well when he's not smoking his cigarettes and drinking but rather concentrating on singing.

Like this one, where he pulls off a nice unplugged version of "Endless Dark", a track from Love Metal.

http://www.youtube.com/wa...hfI-AQdFPM

And this great performance of "Gone With The Sin" is probably one of my favourite live performances by the band.

http://www.youtube.com/wa...vUMbxilzkE
[Edited 11/1/08 5:06am]

novabrkr said:

Uhm... no, not really

FuNkeNsteiN said:

In terms of popularity and media coverage, I would say yes. He definitely has been the biggest international music icon of the Finnish music scene ever (no, I'm not saying "the most talented"). It has waned off since considerably, but that always happens in any case.

Around the year 2000 you really couldn't go anywhere in this country without his face being printed on something, or people speaking about hardly anything else than "Join Me" in bars. You probably were a bit too young to remember that firsthand - or to go to bars for that matter. It was not just here, the crazy soda-metal consuming Germans were totally in love with the guy for some year or so as well.

Then came EMO.