There’s a plethora of sub-categories in the master genre of metal music, to the point it’s been satirized many times in documentaries and animation. Power metal, thrash, death metal, black metal, doom, sludge, math metal, folk metal, Viking metal, proto metal, nu-metal, taiko metal, psych metal, party metal, I’m surprised a blaring hippie band like Enuff Z’nuff never got tagged with “Flower Power Metal.”

I should know. I covered the stuff for 16 years.

Finnish Goth metal band H.I.M., who carried a massive following from the 1990s through their breakup in 2017, has the distinction of carrying a second brand named after their fourth album, whether they wanted it or not. They probably did, since their music became precise and calculated, whether you were a fan or not. Dark romance anthems swung high largest by former MTV personality, Bam Margera, and the millennial generation he pandered to: Love metal.

As if the calling-card heartagram logo following H.I.M. (dubiously standing for His Infernal Majesty) is indicative, the band formed by vocalist/guitarist Ville Valo and bassist Mikko “Mige” Paananen, engineered a mass-fed Goth movement not even the founding masters Mission UK, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Sisters of Mercy were able to hit outside of the alternative rock ranks.

Dangerously infectious, H.I.M. morphed from the tenebrous world they started into a brand of perfected and polished amp rock carried by Ville Valo’s trademark lovesick weeping. Too slick at times for many critics’ tastes, Razorblade Romance, Deep Shadows and Brilliant Headlights, Dark Light and Love Metal became neo-Goth hipster couture.

The latter album probably being the best of this middle (and most profitable) section of H.I.M.’s career, “The Sacrament” from Love Metal is genius level power pop with a swooning piano melody that’s been a personal earworm for two decades since it came out in 2003. An absolute masterpiece of its kind, much less heavy rock itself, other standout tracks from Love Metal are “Buried Alive by Love,” “Soul on Fire,” “Beyond Redemption” and the incredible, Peter Murphy-esque “Circle of Fear.”

The sacrament is you.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.