Coming off my Valentine's Day blog last week, I've been growing increasingly depressed. First of all, if you think that blog was depressed, obviously you don't know me very well but I can see how it was a downer. But honestly I wasn't as bummed as I normally am during V-Day due to being more paranoid about paying for car repairs. But now that that's over with and the sticker shock is worn off (though I am mad about having to devote most of my tax refund to it), I think the Valentine's Day depression is coming a week late. Honestly I was fine earlier this week then suddenly it all snuck up on me at once and I couldn't sleep (which is VERY rare for me) and I was getting major headaches from the stress. So, with all of this stress caused by a holiday celebrating love while I'm suffering from a severe lack of it, I find it a tad bit ironic that I'm reviewing an album that focuses on love by one of my favorite bands. Much like most American fans, I discovered HIM (short for His Infernal Majesty though they don't really acknowledge that anymore) due to Bam Margera's rabid fandom and his flashing of the iconic "Heartagram" at any opportunity. And while constant shilling has died down in recent years, that hasn't stopped HIM from releasing albums stateside, the most recent of which being "Screamworks: Love In Theory And Practice - Chapters 1-13."
Being one of my favorite bands, I've been wanting some new material from HIM for about a year now and was psyched to hear that they had embraced '80s synthesizers and keyboards for Screamworks. Being born in '83, that's the stuff I grew up with even if I was too young to fully appreciate it. And when the video for their first single, Heartkiller, came out, I got even more excited (despite the fact that singer Ville Valo persists to be filmed shirtless despite having the body of a female Calvin Klein model circa 1993). But truth be told, you could honestly listen to Heartkiller thirteen times and it would have the same effect as listening to the album. All the songs have a similar sound with unobtrusive uses of synths and all songs clock in around the 3:30 mark. Of course I'm oversimplifying it but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sure it's a relatively quick listen but it's solid all the way throughout and it's vintage HIM, just with a slightly different sound. The standard HIM lyrics that are moodily-romantic at best and morbidly-suicidal at worst are still there but the electronic elements make HIM sound, dare I say, downright happy. Take for example my current favorite track Scared To Death, which I honestly wouldn't be surprised to hear as the band's next single and would work well in some indie romantic comedy or something. Also, Scared To Death is a perfect example of HIM's music melding so perfectly with Valo's vocals that it could bring you to tears (much like Play Dead from the Dark Light album or The Cage, the bonus track from the same album). And while I'm a fan of bands playing around implementing different sounds throughout the course of an album, Screamworks' consistency works in its favor. One of my biggest pet peeves is when an album has a definite flow going throughout a few tracks but is brought to a grinding halt by a completely different sounding song, which I thought HIM did on their previous album Venus Doom with the acoustic track Song Or Suicide. The only track on Screamworks that sounds substantially different than the rest is the album closer The Foreboding Sense Of Impending Happiness, and even then it still sounds like a HIM song, just if it was being covered by the likes of Deadsy.
But while I really dig this album, I'm kinda hesitant to give it a glowing review...at least not right now. You see, HIM has been trying to progress their sound over the course of the last few albums. With Love Metal and Dark Light, they solidified their trademark sound that they started on Razorblade Romance and Deep Shadows And Brilliant Highlights. Then when Venus Doom came out, they built upon that sound by adding some droning sludge on top of it, making them sound like an emo Black Sabbath (don't take that as a insult, that's the best I could come up with). But as much as I like Dark Light and Venus Doom and gushed about them on the first listens or so, I always find myself going back to Razorblade Romance, which I still consider my favorite HIM album. So I don't want to come out and blow my load, saying this is "the best HIM album" ever, only to forget about it and listen to their old stuff. But this album IS really good and I'm hoping this won't happen. So how about we give it a solid B and call this review done. If you don't like HIM, I doubt this will change your opinion but if you do like HIM, definitely pick it up. The sound is slightly different but the fundamentals are still the same so you can't really go wrong. ***NOTE - I did NOT buy the Special Edition, which comes with a bonus disc of the entire album done acoustically. If it were cheaper, I probably would have but personally I don't like acoustic songs very much so I passed. It kinda bummed me out as I have bought the Special Editions of Dark Light and Venus Doom and the bonuses for Screamworks far outweigh the bonuses for those albums (an entire album vs. a few bonus songs and special packaging) but I think I might go back and check those songs out on a download in a while.
Ok, with that out of the way, I have to mention now that the Blockbuster down the road has closed down, I found out another movie rental place in town is shutting down and selling off their stock as well. (Un)Fortunately, I dropped by and I probably won't be dropping a lot of money there like I did with Blockbuster. Don't get me wrong, they have a ton of crap...but that's what it is, CRAP. The thing is they're still renting out their new releases, which aren't for sale, but everything else is. And considering most places' new releases are anything that's been released within the past two years, all the leftovers are either really old (and thus probably beat up all to hell) or straight-to-video crap so bad that I won't even touch it (which is saying something). There's a ton of titles but only about one copy of each but there are a few more recent movies with multiple copies (which are cheaper for some reason). And unlike Blockbuster, they have a ton of games but unfortunately the new release games are not for sale as well. When I went earlier this week, I picked up Tropic Thunder as my only movie and WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007 and Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, both for the PS2, all for less than $20. I haven't played much of SvR07 since that's when they changed the control scheme from button combinations to using the control sticks and I'm not used to it, plus the screen jitters during Create-A-Wrestler mode, which I usually spend more time on than the game itself. And I'm not really all that good at Street Fighter II but Anniversary Collection comes with SFII: The Animated Movie as a bonus feature so I watched that. Ah, teenage memories. I might go back sometime and pick up Moon, which my roommates were watching a few days ago and looked pretty damn good. As for games, I might pick up Zack and Wiki for the Wii but considering I still have New Super Mario Bros., MadWorld and House of the Dead Overkill to beat, I probably shouldn't be getting any Wii games. And I don't really plan on picking those up until I beat Yakuza 2 for the PS2 anyway. As an additional note, unlike Blockbuster, this place has a porn section. I don't know if they're for sale but I thought about it since I'm a lonely bastard. And then I remembered "Hey...this is USED porn. GROSS!" Yeah, I don't think I could do that. Thank god for the Internet.
I guess since everyone else is talking about it, I might as well talk about the Tiger Woods press conference. I didn't see it myself but I heard that Tiger really didn't say anything of importance, plus his insistence to apologize directly into the camera came off as cheesy. Honestly, unless he came out with a giant dot-matrix printed stack of paper of all the ladies he's boned and listed them off one-by-one, I honestly could care less. On the one hand, it's sad that he decided to throw away his (smoking hot) wife and kids and possibly his career just for random boning but on the other hand, the dude had like eleventeen mistresses. Yeah, it's wrong but that takes some kind of skill! I'm honestly surprised he doesn't have more out there...or maybe he does. In other things I don't pay attention to, the Winter Olympics are still going on. Honestly, the only Olympic footage I saw was earlier this week when I hung out with some friends at a bar and watched it on the TV there. Mostly it was snowboarding and we talked about how all snowboarders are probably stoners (seriously, flannel AND dreads are a dead giveaway, especially on a Japanese dude) and how puberty did not do Shaun White any favors. Ginger or not, he should've found a way to stay 14 forever. Also, I'm not queer or nothing but Apollo Ohno is a sexy hunk of man. Dammit, did I just type that out loud? I really am getting lonely. But mostly while watching I thought "Why are all the events so damn cold?", like the dumbass I am. I usually equate Winter with staying inside and avoiding snow at all costs so can't we have, I don't know, Nude Bear Rug Wrestling In Front Of An Open Fire...wait, that sounded kinda gay too. Why can't we have High School Girls' Beach Volleyball in the snow, huh? There we go, back on track. Anyway, in some misplaced effort to facilitate discussion, I present to you The 20 Funniest Figure Skating Faces. Oddly enough, the pictures are literally of the same 4 or 5 people making the exact same faces multiple times...which makes it all even funnier.
Finally, after an extended hiatus, The Veterans of a Thousand Midnights are getting back together tomorrow afternoon. It's been pretty hard with the winter season and the fact that a few key members now live an hour away from Toledo in separate directions but hopefully we'll be playing something tomorrow (don't know what though) and maybe have a podcast up soon after. Personally, my itch for gaming hasn't really come back but I do like participating in the podcasts, even if I am usually the one who causes them to go off track. Don't forget to check the blog (V1kM, not mine though I don't mind you checking this blog repeatedly) for more updates.
PS - I bought Black Dynamite today. I'm super-pumped.
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