HIM
Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666

"Goodbye, my angel"

Milan Central Railway Station, Sunday, June 13, 2004, 2:58 PM

This will not be an objective review, I realize that. Too many are the tears, the kisses, the glances that these songs are soaked with. Too much the suffering, the nostalgia, the memories they bring. I write with the hope, perhaps vain, that they can make you relive, even for just a moment, what I have lived.

How can Love and the Beast merge, unite in divine antithesis, embrace in a harmonic and contrasting spiral? How can the complementary oxymoron of Eros and Death, intimate and sweet contradiction, descend from the highest spheres of intuitive perception and become flesh, a sensible world?
With music. This music.
And, while the cold human work elaborates and prepares to transform corporeality into sound, and sound, oh emotional wonder, into feeling, even on the fragile electronic matter, on that CD player display, which has so little to do with the human soul, there will be readable the mark of an elusive transcendence, only intuitable. Not the simple duration of the songs, not the actual minutes of pure sonic pleasure, but a number. The number. 666. Sixty-six compositions for as many minutes.

"Your Sweet Six Six Six" opens, wanting to underline the throbbing presentation of the work. Mere technique plays little role here, as indeed in almost all other titles. But that hardly matters, because the beauty of the track is not altered by it. The sound is clean, enveloping, yet strangely cold, with a note of despair, accentuated and exalted by the voice, of a particular tone, almost a contained moan of despondency. Slightly dreamy, with psychedelic sounds, "Our Diabolikal Rapture" opens. It would be of little use to speak of the soft, warm, and echoing singing, of the grandiose bass lines that weave in a jubilation of gloom. It would be pointless to describe the sweetness of the voice without instrumental accompaniment. Tender, wintry, it cannot be described: it must be listened to. "It's All Tears (Drown In This Love)," instead, unfolds on contrasting tones. Veiled lows of bitterness oppose mournful high parts, all inscribed in varied and elegant instrumental phrasing. The riffs alternate in delicate passages, arranged in skillfully constructed structures that do not at all make the absence of solos felt. An enigmatic ending, almost a break, leaves the listener puzzled, delighted, and annoyed.
And, here is the focal point of the album. After the sumptuous baroque sounds, here is the emotional outlet point, which sums up in itself the quintessence of the work itself. "When Love And Death Embrace." A harmoniously cadenced drum accompanies the evolution of a single, poignant guitar solo with twilight tones, which ignites and eclipses, sometimes accompanying a soft and deep voice, sometimes yielding the main part to it. An ephemeral journey, briefly intense, full of sweet mysticism. The following "The Beginning Of The End" is composed of splendid vocal and choral dialogues. The instrumentation intervenes imperceptibly, veiling the melodic framework with melancholy. The singing used in the verses, muffled and distant, offers moments of surrender. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is one of the best covers ever made. Reworked in a baroque style, with an excellent keyboard work and a vocal dialogue between Ville Valo and a massive female insertion, the track assumes an unsuspected intensity and emotion.
The sequence closes with a "For You" with strong gothic accents, featuring elaborate instrumental parts and an organ score that touches the melody with a touch of wise decadence. The vocal effects manage to give feelings of infinite melancholy. The track evolves slowly until its end and an illusory silence. A cold, charged silence, like an instant captured and trapped in a timeless world. A silence that seems to linger forever, until a particular symphony, soft, without a voice, evoking mnemonic landscapes, concludes it all, leaving room for a now serene calm.

"All I want is you to take me into your Arms..."