Tears on Tape

At the start of 2011 the band parted with Sire Records. Rehearsals for the next album began in May, and within a few months the drummer Mika Karppinen — Gas Lipstick — was complaining of pain in his wrists. The examinations found nerve damage in his hands and arms from repetitive stress, and his doctors told him to stop drumming so that it could heal. The singer Ville Valo is said to have sat in on drums while the new material was being worked out. The treatment worked, and after about eight months the band could rehearse with him again. Rehearsals resumed in the summer of 2012 and in September they went into Finnvox Studios in Helsinki with Hiili Hiilesmaa — their fourth album at that studio and their fourth with him. Live in-studio performances were recorded in audio and video at the same sessions and used as bonus material. Tim Palmer began mixing in London in November 2012 and finished in early December. With no label behind them the band paid for the record themselves, which left them in the unusual position of owning all of its publishing. It is also the first HIM album to carry instrumental tracks. It came out in Finland on 26 April 2013, in Europe on the 29th and in the United States and Canada on the 30th. The running order here is the original's as printed.