HIM
Biography and discography of HIM, the Finnish band formed in Helsinki in 1991 by Ville Valo, with a page for each of their eight studio albums from Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666 in 1997 to Tears on Tape in 2013, including running orders, CD details and liner notes, on METAL BOOST.
Biography
HIM
Biography
HIM were a Finnish band formed in Helsinki in 1991. The singer Ville Valo and the bassist Mikko "Mige" Paananen started it as His Infernal Majesty; it stopped after a few years and was started again in 1995 by Valo and the guitarist Mikko "Linde" Lindström. They are known for the phrase they coined for their own music, "love metal", and for their logo, the heartagram. The band broke up at the end of 2017.
Formed in Helsinki (1991-1996)
The band began in Helsinki in 1991 as His Infernal Majesty. It stopped within a few years, and in 1995 Valo and Lindström started again. Mige rejoined, the keyboard player Antto Melasniemi and the drummer Juhana "Pätkä" Rantala came in, and the name was shortened to HIM. In Japan and the United States the spelling H.I.M. has also been used, to tell them apart from another band of the same name.
A four-song release, 666 Ways to Love: Prologue, came out in Finland alone in 1996. It did not sell in quantity, but their version of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" got their name noticed.
The debut, and Razorblade Romance (1997-2000)
The debut, Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666, was published in Finland in November 1997 and produced by Hiili Hiilesmaa. It holds nine songs, followed by fifty-six tracks of silence of differing lengths and a hidden one at number 66, which is why the disc runs to 66 minutes and 6 seconds.
The second album, Razorblade Romance, began with Hiilesmaa and stalled, and BMG moved the work abroad. Remade at Rockfield Studios in Wales with John Fryer, it came out in Finland on 19 December 1999 and internationally on 24 January 2000. It went to number one in Finland, Germany and Austria. The first single, "Join Me in Death", topped the charts in Finland and Germany and went platinum and gold. It is also the first HIM album with the drummer Mika "Gas Lipstick" Karppinen on it.
Deep Shadows and Love Metal (2001-2004)
The third album, Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights, took eleven months under pressure to repeat the record before it. It is the first with the keyboard player Janne "Burton" Puurtinen, and that line-up held until 2015. The reviews divided, but it was the band's first album to enter the Billboard 200.
After nearly breaking up on the tour that followed, the band regrouped in 2002 and made Love Metal, which Valo has called the record on which HIM found their sound. They finished with BMG in August 2003, released the compilation And Love Said No: The Greatest Hits 1997-2004 in March 2004, and signed to Sire Records that September.
Dark Light and Venus Doom (2005-2008)
Dark Light was their first worldwide release on Sire, made at The Paramour Estate in Los Angeles with Tim Palmer. It made HIM the first Finnish band to earn a gold record in the United States. It charted in fifteen countries and went to number one, and platinum, in Finland; Warner Music Japan released it here on 26 October 2005.
The sixth album, Venus Doom, was made at Finnvox Studios in Helsinki in 2007. Exhaustion and trouble in his private life had made Valo's drinking worse, he was ill by the time of the sessions and he went into rehab afterwards. The record is regarded as the band's heaviest and darkest, and its number twelve on the Billboard 200 is their highest American placing.
Screamworks and Tears on Tape (2009-2013)
Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice arrived in February 2010. Matt Squire produced it, and the band spent three months rearranging the material before recording in Los Angeles; it is the first album Valo worked on entirely sober after rehab. The band then went on hiatus when Karppinen had to take medical leave.
After several months of uncertainty they regrouped, parted with Sire in 2011 and paid for Tears on Tape themselves, with no label behind them. It came out in April 2013, left them owning all of its publishing, and is the first HIM album to carry instrumentals.
The end (2015-2017)
Karppinen left in 2015 and was replaced by Jukka "Kosmo" Kröger. On 5 March 2017 the band announced that they would disband after a farewell tour, and they played their last concert on New Year's Eve 2017 at their own annual Helldone festival.
HIM are one of the most commercially successful Finnish bands, with sales of over ten million records and eight Emma Awards. Their sound put melodic, melancholic writing next to heavier playing, which made them hard to file — and that is where the band's own phrase, "love metal", came from. Their logo, the heartagram, has travelled well beyond the music.
A note on the line-up
At the end the band was Ville Valo on vocals, Mikko "Linde" Lindström on guitar, Mikko "Mige" Paananen on bass, Janne "Burton" Puurtinen on keyboards and Jukka "Kosmo" Kröger on drums. The drum stool passed from Juhana "Pätkä" Rantala to Mika "Gas Lipstick" Karppinen (2000-2015) and then to Kröger; the keyboards from Antto Melasniemi through Jussi-Mikko "Juska" Salminen to Puurtinen, from 2001.
This site does not carry structured member data for HIM: the band broke up in 2017 and its official site no longer answers. What is above comes from the English Wikipedia's article on the band.
Discography
Eight studio albums are registered on this site. The 1996 EP 666 Ways to Love: Prologue, the compilations And Love Said No: The Greatest Hits 1997-2004 and XX - Two Decades of Love Metal, the two Uneasy Listening collections, the remix album SWRMXS and the live releases are not included.
| # | Album | Released |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666 | November 1997 |
| 2 | Razorblade Romance | 19 December 1999 |
| 3 | Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights | 24 August 2001 |
| 4 | Love Metal | April 2003 |
| 5 | Dark Light | 26 September 2005 |
| 6 | Venus Doom | 14 September 2007 |
| 7 | Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice | 8 February 2010 |
| 8 | Tears on Tape | 26 April 2013 |
Each date is the album's first publication, which for this band is often Finland: Razorblade Romance reached the rest of the world on 24 January 2000 and Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights on 27 August 2001. Sources disagree about the day in November 1997 that the debut appeared, so only the month is given.
Japanese shows
HIM came to Japan three times and played seven concerts. The band broke up in 2017, so that is the whole of it.
The first was Summer Sonic 05: Osaka on 13 August and Tokyo — Chiba Marine Stadium and Makuhari Messe — on the 14th, billed both days on the MOUNTAIN STAGE as "HIM (from Finland)", as the festival's own record of that year shows. Sony Music Japan's artist profile calls this the band's first visit to the country.
The second was two headline shows in March 2006: Tokyo's O-EAST on Friday the 17th and Shinsaibashi CLUB QUATTRO in Osaka on Saturday the 18th, both all standing at 6,300 yen including tax, brought over by Creativeman Productions. CDJournal announced the Tokyo date in November 2005 and the Osaka one that December.
The third was in November 2015, as the joint act on VAMPS' tour: three nights at Zepp Tokyo on the 16th, 18th and 19th. Doors at 18:00, the joint act on at 19:06, 6,660 yen plus tax in advance. MY FIRST STORY, MONORAL and ASH DA HERO took the other nights of that run.
A note on sources
The facts above come from the English Wikipedia's article on the band (the 1991 formation and the 1995 restart, the name, the changes of line-up, "love metal" and the heartagram, the Sire contract, the American gold record, Valo's time in rehab, the hiatus and the 2017 break-up) and its articles on the individual albums (dates, labels, studios, producers, personnel, running orders and chart positions), the Japanese Wikipedia (the Japanese editions' dates and the list of Japanese concerts), Sony Music Japan's artist profile (the Finnish beginnings and the first Japanese visit), the official Summer Sonic history page (the 2005 days and stages), CDJournal (the 2006 dates, venues and prices), BARKS and Universal Music Japan (the 2015 Joint 666 schedule and prices), MusicBrainz's release data (catalogue numbers, formats, track counts and the verified profile links), Wikidata's P2205 statements, and the Spotify embed payloads (identifying each album and whether it will play). All were read on 29 September 2026.
Trivia
Their first visit to Japan was Summer Sonic 2005, and they played both days of it. The festival's own record of that year has them on the MOUNTAIN STAGE in Osaka on 13 August and in Tokyo on the 14th, billed as "HIM (from Finland)", on a stage they shared with The Black Crowes, Public Enemy and Bullet For My Valentine. Sony Music Japan's profile calls this the band's first appearance in the country.
Their first headline visit was two nights in March 2006, one city each. CDJournal announced the Tokyo show in November 2005, at which point Osaka was listed only as planned; the details followed that December. Friday the 17th was O-EAST in Tokyo and Saturday the 18th was Shinsaibashi CLUB QUATTRO in Osaka, both all standing at 6,300 yen including tax, brought over by Creativeman Productions.
The band named its own music. Sony Music Japan's artist profile puts it in a line: HIM called what they played LOVE METAL, and set out a path of their own that folded metal, gothic and pop together. Rather than let anyone else decide which shelf they belonged on, they invented the word for it — and in 2003 they used it as the title of their fourth album.
Their first release reached Finland and nowhere else: a four-song CD, 666 Ways to Love: Prologue, put out by BMG Finland in 1996. Sony Music Japan's profile says it was not a hit, but that their cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" got them noticed. That song went onto the debut album the following year as well.
There are two ways to count the year they formed. Sony Music Japan's artist profile, written by their Japanese label, says the band was formed around Ville Valo in Helsinki in the summer of 1995. The band's own history begins in 1991 under a different name, His Infernal Majesty; it stopped within a few years, and in 1995 Valo and the guitarist Linde Lindström started it again. This site uses 1991, the second way of counting — what the label's profile describes is the restart.
Their last visit to Japan was in November 2015, as the joint act on VAMPS' ＜VAMPS LIVE 2015-2016 JOINT 666＞. The schedule BARKS printed gives HIM three of the six Zepp Tokyo nights — the 16th, 18th and 19th — with MY FIRST STORY, MONORAL and ASH DA HERO on the others. On a weekday the doors opened at 18:00 and the joint act went on at 19:06. The band broke up two years later, so those three are the last HIM concerts in Japan.
The news came out over the weekend of 5 March 2017. As BARKS reported it, the frontman Ville Valo said in the band's statement that after a quarter of a century bound up with Love & Metal, HIM had begun to run an unnatural course, and that it was time to say goodbye and go towards sights, scents and sounds they had not explored. He wrote that they had completed the pattern, solved the puzzle and locked it. The farewell tour opened in Spain on 14 June and ran to thirty-five concerts in fourteen countries by mid-December; the bassist Mige said of it that this was not a gathering for tears but a celebration of love metal.
Dark Light, in 2005, made HIM the first Finnish band to earn a gold record in the United States. It charted in fifteen countries, went to number one and platinum in Finland and gold in Germany, Britain and the United States. Their highest American chart placing came two years later, with Venus Doom at number twelve.
Albums
HIM's eighth and last album, from April 2013. It was made after the drummer Mika Karppinen's recovery and paid for by the band themselves, who had no label at the time.
HIM's seventh album, from February 2010, and the first Ville Valo worked on entirely sober after his time in rehab.
HIM's sixth album, from September 2007. It is regarded as their heaviest and darkest, and its number twelve on the Billboard 200 is the band's highest American placing.
HIM's fifth album, from September 2005: their first worldwide release on Sire Records, and the record that made them the first Finnish band to earn a gold disc in the United States.
HIM's fourth album, from April 2003. Ville Valo has called it the record on which the band found their sound.
HIM's third album, from August 2001. It came out of an eleven-month production that went badly, and it is the first HIM album with the keyboard player Janne Puurtinen on it.
HIM's second album, published in Finland in December 1999 and internationally in January 2000. "Join Me in Death" is the single that carried the band up.
HIM's debut, published in Finland in November 1997. Nine songs are followed by fifty-six tracks of silence, with a hidden one at number 66.