HIM: And Love Said No…
A summary of the Finnish goth rockers’ back catalogue, And Love Said No… sounds, at first listen, to be a soundtrack for embittered romantics who like to take a walk on the dark side. While there is some heavy metal material (It’s All Tears and Buried Alive by Love for example) on the album, there are also some mellow and tender songs which have more in common with blues and easy-listening artists. This mixture of styles is largely to do with the wide range of influences among the band’s members: the drummer is a Slayer fan, the guitarist and bassist are into Jimi Hendrix, the keyboard player owns Tchaikovsky records and chain-smoking frontman Ville Valo is a self-confessed Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison fan. The result is a refreshing blend of delicate melodies, metal riffs and heartfelt lyrics that can appeal to fans of power ballads as well as metalheads.
