VV - The Foreverlost - Single [Review]

"The Foreverlost" is former HIM frontman Ville Valo's third single from his upcoming debut studio album Neon Noir, set to be released on January 13, 2023 under the initialized moniker VV. It follows the 2020 three-track EP Gothica Fennica Vol. 1 (all three songs of which will be featured on the album), "Loveletting" (reviewed here), and "Echolocate Your Love" (reviewed here). "The Foreverlost" sounds like something that you might expect to hear in The Lost Boys, carried primarily by synth and heavy guitar. It reminds me a bit of Billy Idol (whom HIM has actually covered live) but with a heavier, darker, and more gothic edge. My only fault with it really is the same fault that I have with "Loveletting" and "Echolocate Your Love" - I feel that Ville's vocals are not loud enough, drowned out a bit by the instrumental. This, however, seems to be a modern trend amongst rock and metal; Evanescence's 2021 album The Bitter Truth is another example of an album on which that is somewhat of a problem.The song's lyrics are very abstract and poetic - definitely up for interpretation. Ville has offered commentary on the song's meaning, but the only problem is that that, too, is rather abstract: "[It's] yet another loud love song depicting the burlesque butoh between two world-weary souls. All my Carmina Buranas and could've should've would'ves rolled into a neat little Gordian knot of the gothic variety." To put it simply, it's more or less a narrative that Ville has explored plenty in the past via melodious goth tunes ("Join Me in Death"): star-crossed love à la The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.

VV - Echolocate Your Love - Single [Review]

Former HIM (Finnish goth metal band which disbanded in 2017) frontman Ville Valo (who currently goes by VV as his artist name) is set to release his debut solo album Neon Noir sometime next year (in 2023) and has thus far released three singles from it - "Loveletting" (reviewed here), "Echolocate Your Love," and "The Foreverlost." (He also released a three-track EP titled Gothica Fennica Vol. 1 in 2020, but, as far as I know, it has not yet been revealed whether or not any of those three songs will be featured on the album.) "Echolocate Your Love," as was the case with the previous four songs Valo released, is very much in the same vein as HIM, managing to be both soft and heavy at the same time, melodious and beautiful, and simultaneously electronic and organic. Synths and guitar carry most of the weight of the track, even sometimes drowning out Ville's vocals (which, as much as I absolutely adore the song, is one of my faults with "Loveletting"). Ville himself commented on "Echolocate Your Love," saying, "It's a sonic step-by-step guide on how to survive, and perhaps even enjoy, the realm of VV with its abundance of things that go bump in the night. It's a teary mascara marathon between Robert Smith and Ozzy, with a dash of hope." While I absolutely love his description here as it's 100% spot-on, that is also a perfect description of HIM, not just VV, which makes sense because he really is just continuing with HIM except without the other guys. The steps to which Valo refers are found primarily in the bridge between the verses and the chorus: "If you want to dream what I dream," he gently instructs in his signature velvet vocals, "don't close your eyes. If you want to feel what I feel, kill the light." I also wanted to make note of an interpretation that I saw from a fellow fan on social media. Named Timea, they say, "I'm trying to build this song around Hekate because she is the mystical goddess of darkness and the Moon. The three-faced one who shows the past, the present and the future. But there is the mystique of love in it, the moon is the other side of the sun, like love, not only the sunny side has a shadowy side. Submerging in the sea, I think the subconscious is the experience of the unconscious, when a person is tormented by suspicions and cannot face them until he descends into the depths. For me, echolocate your love means certainty when we are waiting for confirmation that this love is real." This is a beautiful and unique analysis of the song, and it absolutely holds up if you look at the song's poetic lyrics, especially in the second verse. While I prefer "Loveletting," this is definitely another strong single from Neon Noir.

VV - Loveletting - Single [Review]

In 2017, I finally fulfilled a long-standing dream of seeing one of my favorite bands of all time - HIM. Seeing them followed the devastating news that they were disbanding after more than two decades together and consequently going on a farewell tour, and I knew that I would need to see them on that tour since it was going to be my last chance. It was such a great experience, but it was also a very emotional one, knowing that it was my last chance and also knowing that I was never again going to hear a new HIM song. Fast-forward to 2020, however, and HIM frontman Ville Valo (under the name VV) released an EP titled Gothica Fennica Vol. 1 featuring three new songs - "Salute the Sanguine," "Run Away from the Sun," and "Saturnine Saturnalia." While it was not HIM, it might as well have been because it sounded just like HIM's typical style of melancholy bluesy metal; VV even revived the heartagram, now slightly updated so that his initials were featured within. There was unfortunately no news, however, regarding whether or not the EP was an album sampler or if there would be a Gothica Fennica Vol. 2 - no news until recently (two years later), that is. On April 8th, VV dropped a new single titled "Loveletting," by far my favorite of the four songs that Ville has thus far released as a solo artist. Like the three songs on Gothica Fennica Vol. 1, it's definitely very much in keeping with HIM, reminding me most especially of the band's 2010 album Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice, Chapters 1-13. A somewhat melancholy but also beautiful and hopeful keyboard motif opens the song which is primarily a mellow rock song with the keyboard motif being joined by a gentle electric guitar riff, and Valo's velvety voice singing the lulling melody of the chorus is enough on its own to remind me of how much I have missed HIM. It lyrically seems to address star-crossed lovers who cannot be together: "Two heartbeats out of sync with each other and crying." (This is also typical HIM territory thematically.) While I don't know for sure, I am thinking that Ville is probably playing all instruments on the track because that was apparently the case on Gothica Fennica, and even though Ville has announced a solo album on the way titled Neon Noir (the lead single of which being "Loveletting"), it's as of now unclear if the three songs on the EP will be on the album or if there will be a Gothica Fennica Vol. 2. Either way, however, I am so excited about this album!

VV - Gothica Fennica Vol. 1 - Single [Review]

HIM (Finnish rock band responsible for hits like "Join Me," "Buried Alive by Love," "The Funeral of Hearts," "Wings of a Butterfly," and many others) is back! Well, not really, but they might as well be because this three-track offering by frontman Ville Valo (going by VV for this release) brilliantly captures the essence of HIM so powerfully that you wouldn't really know the difference listening to it if you didn't know that it was a solo effort. The cover art even features HIM's signature heartagram. I hesitated on whether to refer to this as a single or an EP but settled on single for two reasons - (1) iTunes refers to it as such and (2) a single is technically 1-3 tracks whereas an EP is 4-7 tracks. The release is titled Gothica Fennica (Latin for Finnish Gothic) Vol. 1 and, as just mentioned, offers up three new tracks - starting with "Salute the Sanguine." I can't help but wonder who is playing guitar and drums on these tracks because they sound so much like HIM songs, this one reminding me a great deal of the band's 2005 album Dark Light (my favorite HIM album). "Salute the Sanguine" features HIM's signature heavy yet subdued guitar riffs along with Ville's velvety voice comparing love and death: "Death, come blow me a kiss," he opens. The softer second number "Run Away from the Sun" - featuring Ville rapidly showing off his impressive range - reminds me a bit of the aforementioned "The Funeral of Hearts." The song has a lot of upbeat energy, and Valo's voice is a bit electronically altered at the beginning of the song, making him sound almost like he's singing through a telephone. Lyrically speaking, I can't help but imagine the song being from the perspective of the Phantom, asking Christine to keep him company in his darkness. In the song from The Phantom of the Opera titled "The Music of the Night," the Phantom sings to Christine, "Turn your face away from the garish light of day. Turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light, and listen to the music of the night." Similarly, Valo sings here, "Run away from the sun to me." It's interesting because there is sometimes comfort in darkness compared to light which can sometimes be harsh and stark. Gothica Fennica Vol. 1 then closes with the heaviest song on the single, "Saturnine Saturnalia." The grinding and pounding riffs remind me a great deal of HIM's 2007 album Venus Doom (arguably their heaviest album). It also reminds me melodically of Dark Light's title track. I absolutely adore the use of alliteration in the song's lyrics such as when Valo opens with, "Hearts haunted roar relentlessly." I absolutely adore this three-track offering and am hoping that it is a peek at a full-length album on the way, but given that the single is labeled as the first volume, that indicates that there will, at the very least, be another single or EP.

HIM - Bang and Whimper 2017 - The Farewell Tour - Live at the Worcester Palladium [Thursday, 11/16/17] [Review]

I have been a very loyal fan of the alternative metal band HIM for over a decade, really ever since hearing "Wings of a Butterfly" on the radio when I was in high school, an experience that led me to collecting all of their albums and following them religiously from that point forward. Something that I unfortunately had not had the opportunity to experience, however, was seeing them perform live, and that stayed on my mental bucket list for years. When the band announced that they were calling it quits after approximately twenty-five years of being active, my heart was broken, and I knew that I had to somehow make it a point to see them live during their farewell tour, titled the Bang and Whimper tour. I fortunately was able to attend the show in Worcester, Massachusetts on Thursday, November 16th, planning it around a trip to see my sister in Connecticut. I am beyond thrilled that I finally got the opportunity to see this band. I also saw them at a perfect time because since this was, as previously mentioned, a farewell tour, the setlist was basically a greatest hits setlist. The setlist was as follows:

1. Buried Alive by Love
2. Heartache Every Moment
3. Your Sweet 666
4. The Kiss of Dawn
5. The Sacrament
6. Tears on Tape
7. Wings of a Butterfly
8. Gone with the Sin
9. Soul on Fire
10. Wicked Game
11. Killing Loneliness
12. Poison Girl
13. Bleed Well
14. Heartkiller
15. Join Me
16. It's All Tears (Drown in This Love)
17. In Joy and Sorrow
18. Right Here in My Arms
19. The Funeral of Hearts
20. 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:

1. Buried Alive by Love
2. Wings of a Butterfly
3. Vampire Heart
4. The Kiss of Dawn
5. Soul on Fire
6. Your Sweet 666
7. In Venere Veritas
8. Close to the Flame
9. Poison Girl
10. Venus Doom
11. For You
12. Join Me
13. Passion's Killing Floor
14. Killing Loneliness
15. Scared to Death
16. Gone with the Sin
17. Heartkiller
18. Tears on Tape
19. When Love and Death Embrace
20. 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.

HIM - Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice, Chapters 1-13 [Review]

The band that identifies itself as a "love metal" band follows its 2007 release, Venus Doom, with Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice, Chapter 1-13. In its thirteen-year career, HIM has unleashed anthem after anthem, such as "Join Me," "Buried Alive by Love" and the American success, "Wings of a Butterfly." The most recent album since Screamworks garnered mild success with "The Kiss of Dawn," "Bleed Well" and "Passion's Killing Floor," featured on the Transformers soundtrack album. Screamworks is, as I believe each of the three albums since and including 2005's Dark Light have been, a break from the band's previous work, since it takes on a bit of a more uplifting and happy tone, songs such as "In Venere Veritas," "Scared to Death" and "Katherine Wheel" acting as examples.

The album opens with the aforementioned "In Venere Vertias," which opens the album with Ville's hook, "Let's fall apart together now." Venus Doom is an album with which Ville took the opportunity to experiment with his voice, especially on the title track, and he continues to do such on this album, especially on this song, beginning the chorus of the song in a relatively high register with the word "have," which then rapidly spirals downward into "no fear." Something that I have always loved about HIM is that it takes risks; it loves to make use of new ideas, and that is exactly why I wholeheartedly disagree with those who have told me in the past that the band is repetitive; no two albums, especially not since and including Dark Light, sound the same.

"In Venere Veritas" works as a great way to begin the album, a lot of energy and a lot of poetic beauty, something that has echoed throughout all thirteen years and seven albums of the band's career, beginning with 1997's Greatest Lovesongs, Vol. 666. “Scared to Death” rings with utterly beautiful melodic beauty, while the sheer energy of “Heartkiller” makes it act perfectly as the album's first single. Other standout tracks include the ballad “Disarm Me (with Your Loneliness),” the desperately seeking “Love, the Hardest Way,” the ridiculously catchy “Ode to Solitude” and “Acoustic Funeral (for Love in Limbo),” which despite the misleadingly dark title, is probably one of HIM's happiest songs yet. I enjoy, however, every single song on this album. It is the first album in at least a year to which I can't stop listening, because it is that highly addictive.

The album is definitely one of HIM's best albums yet, which, to me, says a lot, since the band tends to release masterpiece after masterpiece. This album and 2005's Dark Light are probably my two favorite albums to date. Something that I love about HIM is that they tend not to repeat ideas and sounds but instead consistently move forward with new and innovative ideas and sounds, and Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice, Chapter 1-13 is no exception, departing from Venus Doom, which Ville has described as a cross between Metallica and Bullet for My Valentine and instead creating a sound that he has described as “the first time [that] HIM does acknowledge that there is such a thing called happiness.” It is so different, in fact, that many HIM fans are criticizing it for that very reason, but Ville is a new man, sobered up but still making amazing music. I give the album a well-deserved five stars out of five.