Biography

Hailing from Finland, HIM formed in 1991 by vocalist Ville Valo, guitarist Mikko Viljami "Linde" Lindstrom, and bassist Mikko Henrik Julius "Mige" Paananen.
The band's name was His Infernal Majesty (tho' the truth of this "name" is kinda grey) at the beginning, but was changed to just "H.I.M." or "HIM" after people started associating the band with Satanism in Finland. They were also known as HER and HIM and HER for a brief time while in the United States and Germany, respectively.

HIM started out as a cover band of artists such as Type O Negative, KISS, Danzig, Black Sabbath and Depeche Mode.

After many lineup changes and a hiatus from 1991 to 1995 caused by the members' military services, the band now consists of the three founding members plus keyboardist Janne Johannes "Burton" Puurtinen and drummer Mika Kristian "Gas Lipstick" Karppinen.

The band released their first studio album, 'Greatest Love Songs Vol. 666', on November 20, 1997. The album features covers of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" and Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper".

After gaining popularity in Europe, particularly their homeland, with the success of their second album, 1999's 'Razorblade Romance', HIM broke out into the mainstream in the UK in the early 2000s.

The group became more well-known in America and internationally when professional skateboarder and TV personality Bam Margera began using the band's heartagram logo and promoting them extensively on his MTV series 'Viva La Bam'.

HIM is widely recognisable by their heartagram logo. It consists of a heart and a pentagram, which symbolizes the contrast or perfect balance between life and death or love and hatred, or even love and death together. Valo has said that "the heartagram stands for HIM as a band, as an entity, and for 'love metal' in general,".

Many fans of the band have gotten tattoos of heartagrams or other emblems associated with the band (such as the single heart on Valo's right wrist). Some fan-submitted photos of such tattoos decorated the lyric booklet for the limited internet edition of 'Dark Light'.

HIM's widely-debated musical style is often referred to as "love metal" by Valo and by the group's fans, while critics commonly refer to them as gothic metal or gothic rock. However, their musical style varies between albums, and songs. Ville Valo has stated that the band started as a "Black Sabbath tribute band of sorts", which further solidifies the band's heavy metal leanings.

To date, HIM have released seven full albums. The band's seventh and most recent release was titled, "Screamworks: Love In Theory & Practice", which released the first quarter of 2010, just in time for Valentine's Day. There was complimetary 'remix' album, titled SWRMXs, which was released Dec., 2010.