Venus Doom : HIM : Review : Rolling Stone

As doom merchants go, HIM are pretty easy to take. On their sixth album, the long-running Finnish quintet tops Black Sabbath riffs and grinding, tightly wound grooves with Ville Valo’s lovesick crooning, all of which adds up to a dark, sexy sound the band once dubbed “love metal.”(Its logo is a pentagram mashed up with a heart.) Valo keeps his bleeding heart on his sleeve, yowling about dead lovers and dropping creepy poetry like the title track’s gothed-out lament: “Watch me fall for you my Venus doom/Hide my heart/Where all dreams are entombed.” Thankfully, Valo also keeps it pretty songful, coming up with big, decently engaging tunes on cuts like the suavely sung “The Kiss of Dawn” and “Bleed Well,”which sports an eerie, catchy chorus that Queens of the Stone Age would love to have written. The melodies tend toward the lush, while underneath, Valo’s bandmates rock with fury and efficiency, ensuring that all the heartbroken laments are badass enough for hardcore metalheads. Not a bad trick.