Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice
| Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice, Chapters 1-13 | ||||
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Studio album by 
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February 12, 2010 |
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| Label (s) | Sire Records | |||
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CD, LP |
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Title (number) |
13 |
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running time |
47:09 |
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Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice, Chapters 1-13 (English for: " Outcry Works: Love in Theory and Practice, Chapters 1-13 ") is the seventh studio album by the Finnish band HIM . With the release on February 12, 2010 (Great Britain and France February 8, USA February 9, Japan February 10) it is the first studio album to drop out of the previous two-year release cycle of the HIM albums. It came out just before Valentine's Day .
Album title
As with Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights , the title is quite long and represents the yin-and-yang relationship often mentioned by the singer , since in his opinion love is neither theoretical nor practical. The play on words Screamworks is a combination of what Ville is often heard on the album, namely various screams of joy, screams of pain and primal screams and the word works as it appears in one of his favorite phrases " Selected Works of ... ". The latter also symbolizes the collaboration between the band members and represents the album as a whole.
Album cover
A nun is depicted on the album in pop art style. A photograph of a wooden nun sculpture that is in Ville Valo's possession served as the basis. The picture was designed by Matt Taylor and Valo. The main colors are white and turquoise. The booklet contains the lyrics and a photo of Ville Valo. There are no photos of the other band members.
History of origin
After the harder previous album Venus Doom , this is now the attempt to concentrate again on what the band can do best, the frontman confesses in an interview with Metal Hammer . According to the magazine, the inspiration for the album is a woman who the songwriter doesn't exactly know if she is what he's looking for, but at least she made him think about the subject. The songs were created in his hotel room in Los Angeles , where the album was recorded from August 3 to October 8, 2009.
After Valo had come up with the basic ideas for the songs, HIM began to work out the songs. They rehearsed for about seven months and did some demos. The subsequent recordings for the album took place at The Lair Studio in Los Angeles. It was produced by Matt Squire ( Panic! At the Disco , Katty Perry , The Used ) and mixed by Neal Avron at Paramount Studios . For the first time HIM worked with an American producer because they wanted an American sound for their album. Valo said: [...] We had the idea to mix Depeche Mode and The Cult , a broad American rock sound with Kraftwerk . So synths from the late seventies and early eighties [...] .
Music style and topic
Music genre
While on the last album he severely restricted the "cheerful keyboards" in his opinion, they appear more strongly here in the 80s style. According to Valo, the reason for this difference is the band's taste in music during the formation phase: "At that time we listened to a lot of My Dying Bride , Cathedral , Anathema and Paradise Lost . And these bands had an enormous influence on us with Venus Doom . We weren't in the mood for Venus Doom 2. When I started writing the songs, the guitars went rock 'n' roll and metal by themselves, so we surely got along with Rage Against The Machine and let the Stone Temple Pilots infected, [...] "
Subject
Ville Valo said he had a muse for the album. But it is not the first time that he has used the term muse; he also spoke of his girlfriend as a muse in Razorblade Romance . He said the following about the Screamworks Muse:
“I was nearly in love. Well, I think I was. [...] I had been at a standstill and I was wondering whether I had reached the end. [...] but then I suddenly felt all giddy inside. [...] I saw a bit of light at the end of the tunnel and for once it didn't feel like an oncoming train. I didn't pursue the possibility too far though because it had already given me lots of inspiration to write songs. That sums up my perverse sense of being - I ended up spending more time writing about it than actually doing it. [...] ”
“I was almost in love. Well, at least I think so. [...] I had reached a point where I didn't know how to continue and I wondered if that was the end. [...] but then I suddenly felt very tingly (note: giddy = dizzy , in the sense of feeling in love ). […] I saw some light at the end of the tunnel and this time it didn't feel like it was an approaching train. I did not pursue the possibility (note: ... of a relationship ) because it had already given me enough inspiration to write the songs. This reflects my twisted nature - in the end, I spent more time writing about it than acting. [...] "
In an interview with delta radio , he said about the lyrics that he doesn't like direct "diary songs", but rather those that you have to think about and that form a story for each listener.
That's why the lyrics of the album for HIM albums are surprisingly extensive. Ville Valo said: [...] If you listen to modern things and I rarely do that, you will find that they are all incredibly crammed. We wanted to strike in the same line without overloading the songs. [...] The question we wanted to answer is: how do we manage to put as much information as possible into each song without creating a big mess?
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Publications and chart placements
The album is available on vinyl and CD. In Finland , the band's home country, the album reached number 2 in the charts, in Germany number 4 and in Austria and Switzerland each number 7. In the USA and England it was at least among the top 50.
On January 6, 2010 the Heartagram Edition was announced on the official website. This also contains the CD Baudelaire in Braille , which provides all the tracks as an acoustic version. The cover graphic called Saint Scream is also included as a hand-pressed screen print.
In addition to this limited version, there is also a double CD containing the regular album and the acoustic CD.
Heartkiller was the first track to be offered for streaming on Myspace on December 4, 2009 , and four days later as an MP3 download on iTunes. It was first presented live together with Love the Hardest Way and Scared To Death at the Helldone Festival 2009 in Helsinki. Heartkiller was released together with Shatter Me With Hope (The Sword of Democles) as a CD single on February 5, 2010 in Germany.
Information about the video clips
Heartkiller was the first single from the album. In the video you can see the band playing in the dark and animals (or, to be more precise, animal preparations) are faded in, and now and then the face of a woman. Everything is colored in blue and red neon colors. Ville Valo looks very emaciated in the video, apparently because he said he had lost weight due to pneumonia. Directed by James Copeman.
The second music video was Scared to Death . It was shot in Australia. In the video, Valo walks through a city and you keep seeing small white triangles falling from buildings and stairs or raining from the sky. Directed by Eugene Riecansky.
Ode to Solitude contains black and white footage from a tour.
There are also promotional videos for some songs that don't look very professional and can best be described using experimental art:
- In Shatter Me With Hope , a photo of Valos Klaus Kinski's tattoo is burned.
- In Like Saint Valentine you see bare trees alternating with scenes in which someone writes the text of the song on paper. You can also see a child watching the whole thing on a screen.
- In Dying Song you see blurry shots of bodies of water, bushes, trees, rails, cobwebs, etc. on a dreary rainy day. The water drops form the focus.
- In Venere Veritas you see two people doing a polygraph test.
Information on individual songs
- Disarm Me was written sometime between 2001 and 2003, but was only now ready for publication.
- In the arms of rain was created in memory of childhood days and how he ran around in the rain with his brother Jesse.
- With the expression " lesser light " (" smaller light ") in Heartkiller , according to Valo, is meant the moon.
- The expression " In Venere Veritas " is derived from the Latin phrase " In vino veritas " (" Truth lies in wine ") and translated means " Truth lies in love ".
- Ville said about Katherine Wheel that it was about different Katherines. One is Saint Catherine of Alexandria , who was wheeled; he didn't talk about the other Katherines.
- In Shatter me with hope a kind of riddle is given: She'll be the witness to the repose of Evelyn […] turn to page 43 and you'll know how I feel ( She will be the witness of Evelyn's resting place […] blow Page 43 on, and you know how I feel ). Some fans found that this must refer to a photo from Life magazine (May 1947) on page 43. There you can see a young woman, Evelyn McHale , who jumped off the Empire State Building and lies dead on a battered car. She previously wrote: […] My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don't think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me. […] ( […] My fiancé asked me last June if I would like to marry him. I don't think I could be a good wife to anyone. He's better off without me. ) Whether the lines in question in Shatter me with hope fall under pure storytelling or whether they have anything to do with how Ville Valo felt at the time is not known. Also not whether he is referring to the photo (that is, suicidal thoughts or the feeling of "being shattered", which would be inconsistent with Valo's situation at the time) or the message left in which E. McHale said she would not be a good partner for anyone.
Others
- Guitarist Linde released his second Daniel Lioneye album Vol II on June 18, 2010 . This is a side project in which his band mates Mige (bass) and Burton (keyboard) were also involved.
- In December 2010, SWRMX was released, an album with remixes of the Screamworks songs. With this album, HIM's contract for four albums with Sire Records ( Warner Music ), on which they have been since 2005 ( Dark Light ), ended. It was speculated that HIM only made the remix album to fulfill the contract as quickly as possible because they were no longer satisfied with the record company (actually, it makes no sense to waste a contract on a release, so to speak). Ville Valo officially said that he was interested in releasing a remix album. Years earlier he said in the book Synnin Viemää about Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights but basically the opposite: I have the idea to do a remix of the whole album at some point. In this way I can, so to speak, destroy what was created in such a long and difficult way. All of this hard work can be done again by just turning a few knobs. Whether he has really developed an interest in electronic music in the meantime or whether he simply wanted to "destroy" the album by remixing the songs because he was dissatisfied with the performance of Screamworks remains to be seen.
Track list
The pieces without further information were written by Ville Valo.
Screamworks (Standard Version)
- In Venere Veritas - 3:36
- Scared to Death - 3:41
- Heartkiller - 3:29
- Dying Song - 3:32
- Disarm Me (With Your Loneliness) - 4:01
- Love, the Hardest Way - 3:20
- Katherine Wheel - 3:26
- In the Arms of Rain - 3:47
- Ode to Solitude - 3:58
- Shatter Me With Hope - 3:52
- Acoustic Funeral (For Love in Limbo) - 3:58
- Like St. Valentine - 3:15
- The Foreboding Sense of Impending Happiness - 3:14
Deluxe Edition (with bonus CD: Baudelaire in Braille )
- CD 1: Standard version of the album
- CD 2: Track list and order as in the standard version, but all songs are acoustic.
References and comments
- ↑ heartagram.com. Archived from the original on February 1, 2010 ; accessed on January 27, 2010 (English).
- ↑ amazon.de. Retrieved January 27, 2010 .
- ↑ a b studio report in Metal Hammer 01/2010.
- ↑ link.brightcove.com
- ↑ a b Interview in Rockoon! No. 1-2010.
- ↑ a b Sonic Seducer , title: "HIM: The beard is off ...". P. 16, text: Thomas Vogel, edition probably from Jan. 2010 or end of 2009.
- ↑ a b see: Screamworks - Booklet
- ↑ Big Cheese Magazine, March 2010, Heart of Darkness by Ian Chaddock, pp. 47/48.
- ↑ deltaradio.de. Retrieved January 27, 2010 .
- ↑ Zillo -Magazin, p. 16, title: "13 business cards for Valentine's Day", text: Carsten Wohlfeld, issue from the beginning of 2010.
- ↑ Charts DE Charts AT Charts CH Charts UK Charts US Charts FI
- ↑ a b see: HIM / discography
- ↑ heartagram.com. Archived from the original on January 23, 2010 ; accessed on January 27, 2010 (English).
- ↑ buzznet.com ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b see for the director's source: HIM / discography
- ↑ a b c d Big Cheese Magazine, 2010, Heart of Darkness by Ian Chaddock, p. 51.
- ^ "HIM Ville Valo speaking about Disarm Me (With Your Loneliness)" on YouTube , interview from October 31, 2009, source from minute 0:40, here V. Valo mentions that a demo of the song was recorded in 2003; last accessed on Aug. 30, 2015.
- ^ "Ville Speaking about Heartkiller" on YouTube, interview from October 31, 2009, source from minute 1:30; last accessed on Aug. 30, 2015.
- ↑ HIM interview with Ville Vallo by Toazted part 1 -Video on YouTube, Toazted, 2010, excerpt (from minute 4:58); Retrieved Aug. 19, 2015.
- ↑ Juho K. Juntunen: Synnin Viemää. WSOY, 2002, ISBN 951-0-27304-X , Chapter 22 = pp. 194–203 (Finnish)
- ↑ "Ville Valo on UniScreen July 2010" on YouTube, Interview with UniScreen, source from minute 0:27; last accessed on 31 Aug 2015.
