Venus Doom is the 6th studio album from Finland’s most commercially successful gothic metal band. The reason for that success is simple enough. They write and perform reasonably catchy tunes with lyrics that resonate with both a traditional goth and teenage audiences. Love and death have always had a certain popular appeal.
It does no harm that Ville Vallo, the leader singer, is an undoubtedly handsome chap oozing the dissolute elfin charm of a latter day Marc Bolan and armed with a crooning baritone voice that lends the lyrics a sometimes unworthy gravitas.
The album consists of 9 new studio tracks and limited editions also feature 2 live tracks lifted from their previous album.
The previous album, Dark Light, was a commercial success and help HIM break into the big time in the US. It was however regarded as something of a sell-out by long standing fans. Venus Doom seeks in part to redress that and is a slightly less commercial affair with a decidedly heavier vibe and a number of Black Sabbathesque riffs and rhythms.
However, this slight change in musical tone is little more than icing on the cake as the central issue with the album is a lack of ambition. Despite a few hints in the direction of a greater band based performance the structure of all 9 songs remains firmly around Vallo’s singing. This isn’t a bad thing per se, as the guy can definitely sing, but when the lyrics appear to be popped out of the little book of gothic romance it is hard not to do a checklist in your head. Tortured love – tick, weeping – tick, vampires – tick…
The list of song titles should give a flavour of what I am getting at.
1. Venus Doom 2. Love In Cold Blood 3. Passion’s Killing Floor 4. Kiss Of Dawn 5. Sleepwalking Past Hope 6. Dead Lovers’ Lane 7. Song Or Suicide 8. Bleed Well 9. Cyanide Sun
Setting the lyrics to one side, the music is universally well played and despite “the stop the tune it’s time for Ville to sing” style structure of most of the songs, there are a number of excellent instrumental sequences. Where it goes wrong is in leading the listener to think (from the first 30 seconds or so) that the song is going to be a real rocker with grinding guitars, but then suddenly mellowing. That might be a neat trick now and then, but when it’s the only one you have it becomes a bit wearing.
Consequently, despite being a pretty light-weight album by modern standards with only 45 minutes of new material, the album is quite long enough.
Two tracks stand out from the rest and offer something a little weightier than the gothic pop metal that makes up the rest of the album. Track 2 – Love in Cold Blood starts at a modest pace but bursts into life about half way through and ends with a pretty nifty instrumental sequence. This is also true of track 5 – Sleepwalking Past Hope which is over 10 minutes long and represents the only track which demonstrates any real ambition beyond the desire to appeal to a teenage gothic rock dance club audience. All in all, this is a good album but with the band’s success, there was the opportunity for something far grander, far more ambitious than what they’ve ended up producing. Good, but it could, and should, have been better
John Davidson Despite working in IT for the last 20 years and collecting comics for even longer, he is married, has two young daughters and lives in Scotland. Ideally he spends his spare time reading and watching movies, but this is curtailed by the calls of child-rearing and part-time study, not to mention the 'call of the internet'.