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H.I.M. at the Commodore Ballroom

H.I.M. at the Commodore Ballroom, April 16 2010. Michael Caswell photo

H.I.M. at the Commodore Ballroom, April 16 2010. Michael Caswell photo

Review–H.I.M. at the Commodore Ballroom, April 16 2010

-review by Robert Sutherland

H.I.M. came to Vancouver on their current North American Tour. With a tremendous light show, the Finnish band rocked through a high-energy 90-minute set that had many in the audience joining in. I was not one of the concertgoers singing along with lead singer Ville Valo, but I danced all night long.

Since I didn’t have my fingers crossed hoping to hear my favorite song like many did, I was blown away by H.I.M.’s rendition of Chris Isaak‘s “Wicked Game”. I was a bit surprised that this rather heavy rock show didn’t feature any prolonged solos. Oh well. It was still a blast from start to finnish (pun intended).

The Commodore was filled to about 80 per cent capacity and it was almost entirely die-hard H.I.M. fans. I have yet to go to a concert and see more of the band’s merch in the crowd. Whether it was a tour shirt from this current tour or one from the past, a generic band tee or Heartagram fingerless gloves, I felt out of places for not having anything. The fact that I was wearing my “LISTEN TO ASHER ROTH” tee shirt didn’t help me fit in either:

“Who the fuck is Asher Roth?”

“He’s is a white rapper. You should check him out.”

“Rap? Fuck that!”

Near the end of the concert I did my typical walk-around-and-talk-to-random-people about the band thing. Two things came up more than any other point made by fellow concertgoers:

  1. H.I.M. was “mailing in” the performance.
  2. The lead singer is SOOOOOOOO HOT!

I can’t really address the first point (come to think of it, I can’t address either of them), mainly because I have never seen the band perform live before but I can defend them to some extent. They are in the middle of an extensive four-month 60-date world tour. I don’t want to make excuses, but if these fans wouldn’t have said anything I would have just thought it was a great show.

Following chants of “One more song!” and thunderous clapping and foot-pounding (also a “We won gold!” chant in reference to the men’s Olympic hockey tournament where Finland got a bronze) the band returned for another cover, Billy Idol‘s “Rebel Yell”. To once again end on a silly play on words, this song did leave the crowd wanting “more, more, more, more, MORE!”

 

Robert Sutherland

About Robert Sutherland

Robert Sutherland (or Sutherland604 around the net) proudly calls Vancouver home despite spending the better part of 20 years living in three other provinces. Born in Ontario, raised in New Brunswick, survived in Alberta for nearly two years, he now calls East Vancouver home. After graduating college at Vancouver Film School Robert knew he wanted to be in the entertainment industry in some capacity. He took his humour and charisma to the blogosphere and now his writing can be found here weekly in the Video Game Digest, monthly in Ion Magazine, all over the fashion, music & sports sections on Vancitybuzz.com and, since the site was pretty much named after him, Vancouver Concert Addicts. Of note: Robert loves making secret handshakes and tweeting while drunk.
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