Wiki
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Release Date
7 September 2007
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Length
8 tracks
Venus Doom is the sixth studio album by Finnish rock band HIM, released on 14 September 2007 (Germany, Finland, Sweden and Ireland), 17 September 2007 internationally and 18 September 2007 in the United States. Frontman Ville Valo calls the album the band's heaviest yet, describing the roots of its sound in Metallica's album Master of Puppets and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless.
Venus Doom has both the longest and shortest running HIM tracks to date; the longest being "Sleepwalking Past Hope" (10:03) and the shortest being the acoustic "Song or Suicide" (1:10). The album was produced by Tim Palmer (Ozzy Osbourne, Dredg) and Hiili Hiilesmaa (The 69 Eyes, Apocalyptica). Ville Valo told Kerrang! magazine that there is a concept in a couple of the tracks written during the same period of time. Venus Doom is the first HIM studio album to feature a song featuring nothing but an acoustic guitar, aside from vocals.
The album has nine tracks to represent the nine circles of hell from Dante's The Divine Comedy. The acoustic version of "Bleed Well" references this, featuring a verse that was dropped from the final recording. The verse contained the line 'we'll descend to the ninth and last, where we're judged' referencing the next track, the ninth track "Cyanide Sun."
On 26 September, the album debuted at #12 in the US, with 38 000 copies sold. This is a record for a Finnish act. It made #31 in the UK. In Finland Venus Doom peaked at #2, and in Germany it debuted at #3.
At the 50th annual Grammy Awards, Matt Taylor and Ville Valo, for HIM, was nominated for "Best Boxed/Special Limited Edition packaging" for Venus Doom. Venus Doom didn't win, losing out to What It Is!: Funky Soul and Rare Grooves (1967-1977) (performed by various artists and artwork by Masaki Koike).
The cover art was painted by artist David Harouni. Ville Valo purchased one of Harouni's paintings at New Orleans' Harouni Gallery and later asked Harouni if it could be used as the cover. The band launched a contest on their Street Team site, asking fans to use the painting as the base for the Venus Doom cover. The art work by Harouni is used for the regular edition of the album.
The band played the track "Bleed Well" and "Passion's Killing Floor" during the "Projekt Revolution Tour" in Phoenix, Arizona, 1 August 2006. They also performed "Dead Lovers' Lane" live at the "Give it a Name Festival" in Birmingham, England, 28 April 2007 and in Glasgow, Scotland, 29 April. The band also played the tracks "The Kiss of Dawn" and "Passion's Killing Floor" at the 7 July 2007 concert at Brussels, Belgium.
Many songs from the album were leaked prior to its release, such as the song "Venus Doom" and also "Passion's Killing Floor" weeks before it was released on the Transformers soundtrack.
HIM filmed the music video for the first single off the album, "The Kiss of Dawn" starting 21 June in the Los Angeles area. Meiert Avis, who directed HIM's previous video "Wings of a Butterfly", was the director. The production team put out a casting call for a "beautiful girl (model type) to perform in the lead role of the video". Auditions were held on 19 June. Ville Valo has stated that the song "The Kiss of Dawn" was for a "close friend who committed suicide soon after the band wrapped the recording sessions for Dark Light".
The song "Passion's Killing Floor" is on the Transformers soundtrack, which was released on 3 July 2007.
The second single is "Bleed Well," which was released on 5 December 2007.
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