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INFERNAL MAJESTY
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The Finnish goth-metal band H.I.M. (His Infernal Majesty) are not yet a household name here, but they have a fanatic cult following. Last Sunday night, a couple of hours before the band’s set at the Middle East, the group’s tall, skinny, mascara’d frontman, Ville Vallo, strolled into the Central Square CVS; he was obviously an exotic breed, but the girls behind the counter thought he looked like "that guy from Pirates of the Caribbean." There’s certainly a swashbuckling, Johnny Depp–like angularity to him. Back at the Middle East, pleather-bound goth girls mooned dreamily at the stage. The show had been sold out for more than a month, with little in the way of airplay and barely a hint of publicity. The band is ostensibly in America to support the Universal release last fall of Razorblade Romance, an album they released overseas four years ago. But the first song they played at the Middle East was "Buried Alive by Love," the leadoff track to their most recent disc, 2003’s Love Metal, which hasn’t been issued here yet, and the audience, as it would all night, shouted the chorus en masse, as if the number were an old standard. The second tune was their cover of Chris Isaak’s "Wicked Game," whose refrain, "This world is only gonna break your heart," could be their motto. H.I.M. may not quite be the Darkness of death rock, but they’re not far from it. Like current faves A.F.I., they have a reverence for the unholy trinity: Love and Rockets, Samhain, Sisters of Mercy. And Sunday night’s set list gives an idea of their commitment to the most over-the-top goth staples: "The Funeral of Hearts" ("She was the sun/Shining on the tomb of your hopes"), "Your Sweet 666," "Join Me in Death," "Death Is in Love with Us." They’re a harder-rocking band live than on record, though they still found time for a keyboard solo. And Vallo is a star with American potential: in his low register, he’s a dead ringer for Sisters’ Andrew Eldritch, but he spent most of the night in an upper register that sounded like a cross between Chris Cornell and Layne Staley. Another cover — of Neil Diamond’s "Solitary Man" — proved he wasn’t above injecting a little camp fun into the mix, but the best tunes were the band’s own moonlit-walk odes to doomed, cemetery-stalking lovers.
BY CARLY CARIOLI
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