It’s the day of St. Valentine, and for raising awareness of singledom. It’s Scuzz Sunday!
Happy Valentine’s Day – even if I don’t celebrate it. The truth hurts – but my truth is that it’s my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! It’s time for a new entry in our Scuzz Sundays series – where we revisit a classic from the Emo-Rock and Pop-Punk era’s of the late-90’s through to the mid-00’s, to see if there’s still quality to be found within them in the new age. This week’s pick is loosely based around today’s minor holiday, even though I would moan and complain that I’m a firm believer that, if you love someone, you should do things to show that EVERYDAY, and not just a one-off Sunday in February. Load of nonsense. Anyway, now I digress. HIM were a very successful Nu-Metal band in the 90’s who originated from Finland. “Love Metal” was probably their best-known record, but “Razorblade Romance” achieved platinum album sales, and “Deep Shadows and Brilliant Heights” reached the top ten of the album charts in several countries too, with each of the recordings getting strong sales and decent reviews particularly in European territories. They had a few ups-and-down’s in the way of reunions and lineup changes, but they officially remained active until 2017 in some capacity, where they finished off their farewell tour with a final set on New Year’s Day at the Helldone festival. Even now, the group remains to be one of the most commercially successful Finnish metal bands of all time, and they have also won eight Emma Awards. “Buried Alive By Love” was the second single from their fourth LP, “Love Metal”, and it reached #30 in the UK Singles Chart in 2003. Let’s fully cremate our fears with the track below.
Interestingly enough – the character who you see in the old-fashioned music video was played by actress and singer Juliette Lewis, who was one of Hollywood’s “It” girls in the 90’s, and Lewis played the role of Mrs. Audrey Griswald in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation in 1989. If that wasn’t enough, the video was also directed by Bam Margera of Jacksass fame, who also produced the official videos for another single, “The Sacrament”, from the same album. The pacing is fast and the guitar melodies are sharp from the very offset, with a hazy line of synth beats drowning out the distorted guitars when the opening verse comes in. Vocalist Ville Vallo sings about love being a source of rescue for a dark path that our narrator is treading down, as he recites the likes of “To cry is to know that you’re alive, But my river of tears has run dry” and “The kiss of vanity blessed me with a spiritual murder, And fed the gods of war insatiable” over the top of crisp drum beats and the strongly hook-based bridges of the track. The chorus has a sweeping and choral quality, with Vallo singing lines like “A cold heart is a dead heart, and it feels like I’ve been buried alive by love” and “If I wake before I die, rescue me with your smile” above the seemingly endless riffing of the bass guitar chords and the reliance on the drums to complement Vallo’s cinematic, wide-eyed vocals. The samples and the synths are a second thought, and the sudden changes in mood sell a very anthemic style. There’s a lot of production value here, and it’s clear that quite a sum of cash was raked in to make this project. That said, the songwriting is fine – if not defying many tropes or conventions of the genre – since there’s still smooth transitions between each section, and the large pop hooks of the chorus are left to have a nice impact. Though it does sound pretty commercial, the vocal performance is decent and I can picture the track being used in a geeky action video game-like flick such as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Overall, it’s not unentertaining or unenjoyable, although it’s not the most organic sounding track that you’d probably hear all week. It is decent, however, with good effort put into the production of the track and a solid vocal performance from Vallo to complement the fast instrumentation. Quite generic, but there’s enough talent to make it worthwhile.
Pictured: Ville Vallo (Lead Vocals), Mikko Paananen (Bass Guitar/Backing Vocals), Miiko Lindstrom (Rhythm Guitar), Janne Puurtinen (Keyboard) & Jukka Kroger (Drums) (2017) (Photo via LOUDER)
That’s all for now – I hope you have an enjoyable Sunday in whichever way that you choose to spend it. We’ll be kicking off a new week’s worth of posts on the blog tomorrow – starting off with an in-depth look at a Canadian R&B project who shares his name with a type of environmentally friendly bread – albeit a different spelling – and was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize in 2013 for their debut album released via Innovative Leisure. If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/