- Buried Alive by Love
- Heartache Every Moment
- Your Sweet 666
- The Kiss of Dawn
- The Sacrament
- Tears on Tape
- Wings of a Butterfly
- Gone with the Sin
- Soul on Fire
- Wicked Game
- Killing Loneliness
- Poison Girl
- Bleed Well
- Heartkiller
- Join Me
- It's All Tears (Drown in This Love)
- In Joy and Sorrow
- Right Here in My Arms
- The Funeral of Hearts
- Rebel Yell
Almost every song that the band played would be considered one of the band's hits, and most can, in fact, be found on their 2004 greatest hits collection, And Love Said No: The Greatest Hits 1997-2004, and/or their 2012 greatest hits collection, XX - Two Decades of Love Metal. I was overall very pleased with the setlist, although I read that they usually closed shows on this tour with "When Love and Death Embrace," which I definitely would have preferred to hear to their cover of Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell." In fact, my dream setlist would have looked a little bit more like this:
- Buried Alive by Love
- Wings of a Butterfly
- Vampire Heart
- The Kiss of Dawn
- Soul on Fire
- Your Sweet 666
- In Venere Veritas
- Close to the Flame
- Poison Girl
- Venus Doom
- For You
- Join Me
- Passion's Killing Floor
- Killing Loneliness
- Scared to Death
- Gone with the Sin
- Heartkiller
- Tears on Tape
- When Love and Death Embrace
- The Funeral of Hearts
My dream setlist, however, features several songs that were not released as singles, and, as I said, the actual setlist was very much a greatest hits playlist (which definitely seemed to be the intention), and I did very much enjoy that aspect of the show.
Something that has always drawn me to HIM ever since first hearing them more than a decade ago is frontman Ville Valo's vocal ability; he is able to reach both high notes and extremely low notes, and his vocal range definitely did not disappoint at this show. During his performance of some songs, he went even lower than he does on the songs' studio versions, which tended to cause the crowd to go wild. The crowd was most excited during the band's performance of their song "Wings of a Butterfly," which did not come as a surprise to me because that is probably the band's best known song in the United States. (It was, as previously mentioned, the first song that I ever heard of theirs, so it was both an exciting and emotional experience hearing and seeing it played live.) Concertgoers around me, myself included, also seemed to be emotionally touched when, during the band's performance of "Gone with the Sin" (which, although I did not record it, you can see here), Ville Valo temporarily put the performance on hold because he thought that someone in the crowd was hurt. It was very touching to see a musician care about fans enough to interrupt a performance because he thought that someone was hurt. It was fortunate that no one was actually hurt, but it wouldn't have surprised me if someone had been hurt because the crowd was very energetic and fired up. There was a great deal of moshing and crowd-surfing (especially crowd-surfing) during both CKY (one of the two opening bands - the other being 3TƎETH, neither of which I liked very much)'s set and HIM's set. The energy definitely took me a bit by surprise because I have been to heavier shows than HIM where the energy wasn't anywhere near as rabid. Fans were definitely very passionate and happy to be there (as was Ville, who wore a smile on his face throughout a good portion of the set), which I suspect was at least in part because of this being the band's final tour.
Highlights during HIM's set included "Your Sweet 666" (one of my favorite songs from the band), "Wings of a Butterfly" (which, as previously mentioned, garnered a great deal of excitement from the crowd), "Heartkiller," "Join Me" (another well known song of the band's), and "The Funeral of Hearts" (another one of my favorites that I was hoping was going to be on the setlist). I really only had two complaints about the show, and I don't think that either of these complaints was really within the band's control. The first is that there were some songs' musical accompaniment (parts that I don't think were played live, or, if they were, the keyboard or whatever instrument was used was not in tune) that sounded off as if they weren't in tune. The biggest culprit was "The Sacrament," during which the piano accompaniment, which opens the song and then drives it all of the way through, sounded as if it were out of tune. The second is that the band did not interact with the audience much, but I don't hold them accountable for that because they had twenty songs to get through, which, while great, unfortunately did not afford much time for social interaction. As previously mentioned, I just feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to see one of my all-time favorite bands... one last time. (HIM fans will know what I did there.) As I suspected would probably happen, I definitely got emotional once I was at the show, especially when I saw that merchandise was being sold which sported the words HIM In Memoriam 1991-2017. It finally sunk in and hit me that they were actually done, that this band, which has been stealing my heart with tender and beautiful melodies combined with dark strings and aggressive guitar riffs for more than a decade, was actually calling it quits. Ville Valo has fortunately, however, declared that we can probably expect to hear from him in the future, either via a new band or a solo career, so at least there is that.
