by
H.I.M.
- Record Label: Sire/Warner Bros.
- Release Date: Feb 9, 2010
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
This is a solid album, rife with brooding love metal and big choruses, but while this is HIM’s most accessible album to date it’s also the most unpalatable, as Ville takes one step too many towards self-satire.
-
Alternative PressWhen the band are a little more concrete and less spooky, the results are especially compelling, but Screamworks is ultimately successful in its blending of melody and muscle. [Mar 2010, p.90]
-
The material sits within the band’s canon well enough to please longtime fans, and listeners looking for some kind of middle ground between Evanescence, late-period Queensrÿche and Fall Out Boy will more than likely find a few wicked gems to hang their heads to.
-
If I lived completely under a rock, I'd say Screamworks, and HIM in general, would hit Twilight tweeners straight in the heart with its dark, dismal and dire themes, but the more mature crowd would see the excessive sentimentality as almost self-parodying.
-
Old-school romantic Ville Valo croons as often as he screams, so that even when aiming for the stylistic median, a bit of local weirdness oozes forth to make Screamworks more interesting than it's designed to be.
-
A mixed bag, but an appealingly bold one.
-
Q MagazineWhile his lyrics are lascivious to a point, songs such as "Love," "The Hardest Way" and "Heartkiller" are strictly soft-focus, with any semblance of attitude--or actual sex--air-brushed into radio-friendly oblivion. [Mar 2010, p.102]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 125 out of 144
-
Mixed: 1 out of 144
-
Negative: 18 out of 144
-
Dec 10, 2010
-
May 20, 2020This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.
-
Aug 12, 2016