HIM: 'Venus Doom' Enters Finnish Chart At No. 2

HIM's new album, "Venus Doom", has entered the Finnish chart at position No. 2. View the chart at this location.

According to Helsingin Sanomat, "Venus Doom" is expected to land in the U.S. Top 10 when the first-week sales are revealed next Wednesday. HIM's last release, "Dark Light", entered The Billboard 200 chart at #18 back in October 2005. This time around, such numbers will not be regarded as doing the business.

HIM's frontman Ville Valo is quietly confident about the U.S. situation. "Advance orders for the new album are five times greater than for 'Dark Light'," he told Helsingin Sanomat.

According to Valo, the band wanted to make a more minimalist album this time out. Enough time has elapsed from the early '90s when Valo himself was absorbing influences from bands such as CATHEDRAL, PARADISE LOST, ANATHEMA, TYPE O NEGATIVE, MONSTER MAGNET, MY DYING BRIDE and others like them.

"There is no way we could have pulled off that sort of thing at the time when TYPE O NEGATIVE came out with 'Bloody Kisses' [released in 1993]. And you know, by the way, that there's plenty of people today who know nothing about that band, or about the Swedish band CANDLEMASS or PARADISE LOST, even. If we had come out with this sort of material at the same time as them, it would just have come across like a rip-off."

As previously reported, HIM's latest single, a track called "Kiss of Dawn", failed to crack the official British Top 40 chart the week of its release. The song entered the British chart at No. 59, outside the official Top 40 list.

"Kiss of Dawn" is the first HIM single in four years that has not made it to the Top 40 in Britain. So far the "love-metal" band's highest UK entries have been with "Solitary Man", which landed at No. 9 in 2004, and "Wings of a Butterfly", which came in at No. 10 in 2005.