HIM formed in Helsinki, Finland in 1991, when vocalist Ville Valo and bassist Mikko "Mige" Paananen began playing together under the name His Infernal Majesty. Both Valo and Mige played bass, while drummers Sami "Juippi" Jokilehto and Juha Tarvonen rounded out the initial line-up, and His Infernal Majesty fell apart when Mige began his national military service in 1993. The band was reformed in 1995 by Valo and guitarist Mikko "Linde" Lindström , and after Mige rejoined along with a keyboardist and drummer, the band, now called HIM, released its debut album Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666 in 1997. Early on, Ville Valo has stated that the band started as a "Black Sabbath tribute band of sorts" , a raw gothic sensibility that would evolve into their signature sound.
The band's true breakthrough arrived with their second album. In 2000, now with drummer Mika "Gas Lipstick" Karppinen and keyboardist Juska Salminen, the band released Razorblade Romance, which reached the number one spot in Finland, Austria and Germany. The album's lead single "Join Me in Death" would prove to be HIM's breakthrough single, reaching number one in Finland and Germany , and eventually going platinum in their home country. The band coined a name for their genre-blending sound: the band themselves referred to their music as "love metal," the title of their fourth studio album, and according to Ville Valo, the term was coined as a response to people having difficulties categorizing their music. A key part of their visual identity emerged during this era as well, since a central part of HIM's image has been the heartagram, the trademarked symbol of the band, created by vocalist Ville Valo on his twentieth birthday in 1996, meant to represent the juxtaposition of "the soft and the hard, the male and the female, the yin and the yang." Following Razorblade Romance, HIM continued to build a global following. After the minor setback of Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights in 2001, HIM went on to release some of their best loved work including 2003's Love Metal and 2005's Dark Light, cementing their place as a genre defining act and one of Finland's finest and most commercially successful musical exports. Their U.S. breakthrough came with notable commercial success as HIM sold over 10 million records worldwide and became the first Finnish rock act to earn a gold certification in the United States with their 2005 album Dark Light. The band also weathered lineup shifts, entering the U.S. market briefly as "HER" due to naming disputes, and continued releasing music through the 2000s and into the 2010s, with their eighth album, Tears on Tape, featuring mixing work by Palmer and production by Hiili Hiilesmaa, released in early 2013. After more than two decades together, HIM's story came to a close. Frontman and creative driving-force Ville Valo announced in January 2017 that HIM would formally disband following a farewell tour later that year, as they felt the band had "run its natural course." The band played its final show on New Year's Eve 2017 as a part of its annual Helldone Festival. Despite the split, the band's legacy endures, as HIM remains one of the most commercially successful Finnish bands of all time , and their fusion of gothic rock, metal, and melodic romanticism left a lasting mark on the alternative and gothic rock scenes worldwide.
For the archive at waynedennon.com, HIM holds a special place among the bands Wayne captured on stage. He photographed the group during a single 2007 concert, a brief but memorable encounter that yielded 46 photographs now preserved in the collection. Those images have resonated deeply with visitors in the years since, drawing 34,990 views from fans revisiting the raw energy and gothic theatrics that defined HIM's live performances during that era of their career.
