When Love & Death Embrace - Best of 1997-2003
HIM
When Love & Death Embrace – The Best of HIM 1997-2003 is a compilation album released on October 25, 2024 via BMG, collecting 16 tracks from the first four studio albums by Finnish gothic rock band HIM. The anthology spans the band's formative and most commercially successful early era — from their 1997 debut Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666 through Razorblade Romance (2000), Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights (2001), and the critically acclaimed Love Metal (2003) — representing the years in which frontman Ville Valo and the band pioneered what they famously coined "love metal": a sound fusing heavy rock and gothic atmospherics with unabashedly romantic, melodramatic lyricism. The collection is available as a standard CD (in a wallet with spot gloss and embossing) and a limited-edition 2LP pressing on 140g white vinyl with a spot gloss gatefold jacket.
The 16-track selection reads as a definitive survey of HIM's most iconic moments from this period: fan favourites and radio hits including "Join Me in Death," "Right Here in My Arms," "The Funeral of Hearts," "Gone with the Sin," "Buried Alive by Love," "Heartache Every Moment," and the title track "When Love and Death Embrace" are all present, alongside two of the band's celebrated covers — Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" and Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." IMM noted that the release arrived at Halloween — a fitting timestamp for a band whose aesthetic ran so deeply through the goth and darkwave underground of the late 1990s and early 2000s — and the 2LP vinyl version marks the first time this body of work has been gathered together on that format.
When Love & Death Embrace - Best of 1997-2003
HIM
When Love & Death Embrace – The Best of HIM 1997-2003 is a compilation album released on October 25, 2024 via BMG, collecting 16 tracks from the first four studio albums by Finnish gothic rock band HIM. The anthology spans the band's formative and most commercially successful early era — from their 1997 debut Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666 through Razorblade Romance (2000), Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights (2001), and the critically acclaimed Love Metal (2003) — representing the years in which frontman Ville Valo and the band pioneered what they famously coined "love metal": a sound fusing heavy rock and gothic atmospherics with unabashedly romantic, melodramatic lyricism. The collection is available as a standard CD (in a wallet with spot gloss and embossing) and a limited-edition 2LP pressing on 140g white vinyl with a spot gloss gatefold jacket.
The 16-track selection reads as a definitive survey of HIM's most iconic moments from this period: fan favourites and radio hits including "Join Me in Death," "Right Here in My Arms," "The Funeral of Hearts," "Gone with the Sin," "Buried Alive by Love," "Heartache Every Moment," and the title track "When Love and Death Embrace" are all present, alongside two of the band's celebrated covers — Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" and Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." IMM noted that the release arrived at Halloween — a fitting timestamp for a band whose aesthetic ran so deeply through the goth and darkwave underground of the late 1990s and early 2000s — and the 2LP vinyl version marks the first time this body of work has been gathered together on that format.