HIM
666 Ways To Love

What I am about to review is a very special album, an album that perhaps very few (only true enthusiasts) will know, but not because it's bad, quite the contrary: I am talking about "666 Ways To Love" by the much-discussed H.I.M.

This very rare demo released in 1996, saw the light thanks to the great ambitions of five young men passionate about Black Sabbath-style hard rock and what the group's mastermind Ville Valo, accompanied on drums by Juhana Tuomas Rantala, on guitar by Mikko Viljami Lindström (Linde), on bass by Mikko Henrik Julius Paananen (Migè), and on keyboards by Antto Einari Melasniemi, calls Scandinavian blues.

Light years away from the musical shift of the latest H.I.M., the album represents an excellent mix of gothic metal akin to Sisters of Mercy and the dark hard rock of the aforementioned Black Sabbath. The lyrics, which accompany truly fitting music—excluding the not-so-successful cover of "Wicked Game"—turn out to be decadent and sad without, however, delving into the unnecessary excesses that often belong to gothic bands. The record opens brilliantly with "Stigmata Diaboli" (a track that will later be reused in Razorblade Romance, under the name Sigillum Diaboli), a fast and "violent" piece that begins with a nice distorted guitar riff, to which the filtered voice of the vocalist then joins: the final result is truly good, presenting us with a band that, at its beginnings, knew how to wisely combine metal elements with quieter ones (see the drums, which always keep a more controlled pace). It then continues with the not-too-great "Wicked Game", which, due to a really horrid starting song, doesn't really shine; not even a good overall performance can lift a truly ugly piece. After this slight drop in style, the band recovers with the best track ever written by them: "Dark Secret Love", a heavy song that owes much to Scandinavian gothic metal. The wide and cadenced guitar riffs, accompanied by a well-present rhythmic base, create a highly charming musical foundation, to which Valo's voice, deep and passionate, perfectly ties as he delights between high and acute tones and low and dark ones: the duet between Valo and the female voice, leading the last chorus in a masterful manner, is excellent.

A woman's scream opens "The Heartless", in an atypical version, completely changed from the one present in "Greatest Love Songs Vol. 666", but surely equally beautiful: in this case, the guitar parts are much harder and more distorted, and the drum contribution also becomes weightier. A very, very fascinating dark song.

Unfortunately, being a demo, the disc ends like this, with only 4 tracks, three of which are real gems not to be missed at all; I know perfectly well that for many, listening to H.I.M. means listening to idiotic and commercial music, but I can assure you that in this album the musical content is entirely different from what we are used to knowing from this Finnish band.