Hey, #AngryButtHoleReviews here. Guess what? Ville effing Valo is back on the scene! Say what?
At first, when I saw some interesting "recommended" videos titles "VV - <insert the song name here>" with a heartagram, I got slightly agitated, because who in their righteous mind would plagiarize the most familiar gothic rock symbol so blatantly?! Then I decided to give a try to this little number, and while the video was loading with some ads before it, I scrolled through the comments, and it dawned on me - it was one and only HIM's vocalist Ville Valo! And everyone was celebrating and writing how great his new 3-song EP "Gothica Fennica vol. 1" was. Then I finally gave it a listen.
Let's say, you've been listening to HIM for pretty much your whole life, and you've learnt all of their tricks and the songs' structure. Then they get disbanded, and you're slightly upset, because, well, there was nothing new and of high quality going from them, so it was a more or less right time to quit (actually, it was way too late to quit, but okay). Then you learn that Ville sings songs in Finnish, and you get infinitely disappointed. And later, several years after, this thingy appears. Are you happy? Partially. Because a part of your childhood and teen years is back in your life, but as a developed listener you listen to this and thing that something's really wrong. Because... There's nothing new at all on this EP. It's the same love metal on the softer and more lyrical side with some Latin words sprinkled on top to justify the use of a good old heartagram.
Basically, you listen to any of the three songs from this EP and you think, "But I've heard it all before! It's this, this, and that HIM's songs!", and you won't be wrong. Indeed, Ville Valo took all the material, studied it, and then decided to create small Frankenstein's monsters out of his own songs, yet not bringing anything new to the genre or the music itself. It's just HIM, but less epic. Did it make any sense to return like this? It didn't, really. Good old VV is trying to revive what died several years ago.