HIM have been touted as the only Finnish band, aside from The Rasmus, ever to achieve big success and to break the American charts, with over 500,000 copies of their album Dark Light sold in the US. Ville Valo and his band mates had to live up to my very wild expectations. Through the likes of promotion such as that from friend Bam Margera of Jackass fame, HIM had become popular with youth the world over, in a career that has spanned over two decades.
Tonight, HIM brought their self-coined style of “love metal” to the stage of Festival Hall. The heartagram symbol got a good showing, adorning the clothing and apparel of hardcore fans, some with the patented heartagram tattoos on their bodies to show just how die-hard fans can be for a band of this stature.
As usual with gigs of the sort, the support band is seldom announced. Tonight, it gradually became evident that it was the amped-up UK punk rock band called McQueen. They hit the mark with chick rock galore and thundering displays of instrumental chaos. Despite their ferocity, each consecutive song sounded too similar for many folks’ liking, although Leah Duors understood the meaning of performance. With hypnotic flickers of lights and extended outros to see out songs, these girls made sure the floor crowd had something to rock out to. Throaty screams from Leah with ballsy riffs and cheeky behaviour ensured their acceptance as suitable supports.
In a trend that was to be oft-repeated, clouds of smoke rose into the air, and looking around, there appeared plenty of space still to be filled on the standing floor. Vertical pink colored lights set the scene, with the odd placement of HIM’s keyboards set horizontal on the stage. On the wall behind the band, HIM had their latest album Venus Doom cover art featured.
An excruciating scream made certain that HIM had a cult following among the medium-sized crowd attending. After some intro riffing, Ville casually emerges as if he were walking down the street, cigarette puffs in quintessential rock star style. It’s an enthralling atmosphere with an exuberant crowd. As always with a band of their calibre, the intensity is always high octane to begin the show with extreme elation from the crowd. The beanied Ville comically vocalises through drags of a ciggie, protruding from his fingertips like Brian Molko would – except Ville seems much more careless.
Lead guitarist Mikko Lindstrom is amazing, the dread-haired fellow is tight on the riffs and enthralling on the solos, comfortably assured that he can pull it all off with ease. Despite the over-eager fans, the first song seemed a warm-up track, but shortly within, HIM were engaging and wildly enthusing. Buried Alive by Love, this song was pure adrendalin. Ville gargles some water then spits it out, perhaps to rid the dry mouth from bitter cigarettes. Soon after, we are treated to their rendition of Wicked Game from 1999’s Razorblade Romance. This is a pleasant moment to witness, however inaudibly Ville sings the lyrics at times.
Between friendly growls and diabolic musings, the rock ensues again. Your Sweet 666 plays to a hyped response, as expected. Join Me is another from the Razorblade Romance album that makes it onto the set-list, as lead guitarist steals the show again for some time. Unfortunately, the atmosphere died down a bit and the set started to wane at this point. They did, however, play a lengthy set to accommodate. Ville had brief spurts of enthusiasm when he noticed things dropping off, and he got the crowd revved up again as if they were longing for more excitement. Many punters commented that they felt the Palace show rivalled this particular Festival Hall gig, perhaps due to the intimate nature of the former show or the general atmosphere and intensity.
Ville mumbles some incoherent, accent-laden things between songs, while all that was audible was, “thank you very, very much”. As if to surprise after some casual meanderings, incredible riffing takes hold, and we get some guttural screams from Ville before he needs another swig of water to soothe those vocal chords. Ville has pretty much the same stance from start till finish, one hand on the mic, slight lean forward and cigarette in his right hand.
Stamping, chanting and bouts of hysteria prompted an encore of three or more songs to cap off what became a journey past 11pm. The band play a minute or so of outro music after Ville walks off stage before his bandmates, left to justify the mediocre nature of the gig. Many punters appeared content with the show, particularly the inebriated ones, perhaps attempting to squeeze every last drop out of the band. Most of all, it was especially essential to ask Ville to put a bit more energy and vigour into his performance next time, because he wasn’t quite there.
