HIM
Love Metal

'Love Metal' is exactly as it appears at first glance: black and somber.

It is surprisingly expressive in capturing every delicate emotional nuance in the duality of love-death: good and evil, opposites that are inseparably intertwined within the weak and confused human soul, whose vibrations of pain generate this music, as simple as it is icy, as sweet as it is sad, and always tormented, always incredibly suffering. And this has now become the Topic with a capital 'T' for HIM, what they represent and want to represent: all magnificently encapsulated in the silvery symbol on the cover, the Heartagram, the heart and the pentacle.

Everything begins with the unexpected assault of "Buried Alive By Love," whose overly strained speed accompanies Valo's voice to strain out a shouted finale among nervous melodies that drag inexorably into the still dark and wintry scenario of this work; yes, because then, from the silence, a subtle and almost timid voice intones "...love's the funeral of hearts and an ode for cruelty...": "The Funeral Of Hearts" then explodes in all its tormented but powerful melodicism, witness to a story of love and death, a story full of tears, which brings deep night into the listener's soul. Night that continues unfathomably in the subsequent tracks, probably less incisive, perhaps too prolix, until again from the silence, we hear the echo of sweet and ghostly piano notes, faint, elusive, lost in the air like a few snowflakes whipped by the wind: "The Sacrament" begins, a weak light that stands out, the only song on the album to show a vague glimmer of hope. Then a deep sigh, and we return to the usual darkness, to infinite darkness... "Endless Dark" is the culmination, the furthest point from love and closest to death, here the balance of the Heartagram wavers; Valo offers us some remarkable vocal virtuosity with a voice that is hoarser and more resigned than usual, but always sweet and expressive, standing out particularly in some very incisive acoustic segments. Then "The Path" is the path that winds with difficulty and elegance towards the end of this unrealizable journey, where the last emotions that HIM have evoked are remixed and re-heard; love and death again find their painful but inevitable balance and sweetly accompany us to a vaguely distressing finale.

'Love Metal’ is a very emotional album, dotted with some moments of authentic, sad poeticism; lyrics never banal and appropriately melancholic music, sometimes slow and syrupy. And here lies probably the fundamental flaw of this work, and more generally, the fundamental flaw of HIM: it is undeniable that they are excessively saccharine, and this makes 'Love Metal' somewhat incomplete. Let me explain: the ambitious project of Valo & co, to be forerunners and champions of a new genre (but is it really new?), precisely love metal, succeeds for now only in part. Indeed, because this album has hard-to-bear drops in tempo: after the beautiful opener "Buried Alive By Love", there are very few tracks that manage to lift the album's pace ("Soul On Fire" and to some extent "Endless Dark" and "The Sacrament"); for the rest, you find yourself bewildered and lost in a syrupy valley of very slow notes in songs sometimes well-executed, but in the case especially of “This Fortress Of Tears” not particularly successful... so much love and so little metal, one might say! A very weighty flaw, needless to say, for a band that aims to make metal music.

In conclusion, however, it's a good album, with forgivable but not negligible flaws; at the moment, in my opinion, 'Love Metal' stands as HIM's best album, in a head-to-head with 'Razorblade Romance', the latter a much icier and more uniform album, with fewer smudges, but also lacking standout points, tracks that clearly stand out from the others, as we find in the work at hand.

Four stars may seem like a lot, but all things considered, it seems like a fair assessment.