From: Billboard.com

HIM frontman Ville Valo says that “accessibility was a key factor” in making the Finnish hard rockers’ seventh studio album, “Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice,” which is due out Feb. 9.

Acknowledging that the 13-song set is the group’s most “straightforward” and hook-filled release yet, Valo tells Billboard.com that he wanted “Screamworks” to “kind of have the similar vibe as Depeche Mode’s classic albums such as ‘Violator’ and ‘Songs of Faith and Devotion’ — brooding, melancholy albums but they still make you want to dance. The big picture production view I had was to have the rock in there so you could drink a beer and do all things legal and illegal but then hopefully have that more poetic and sensitive sensibility in there as well.”

Valo, however, might not be hoisting his own glass while listening to the album. “I quit drinking — not for good but for awhile — about two and a half years ago,” he says. “This is the first album I wrote fully sober, and I wanted to put all the energy I used to put into hanging out in pubs into working on the music. So it was pretty insane, working 18-hour days for the past year, year and a half. We really went for all those details and didn’t leave any stone unturned. Hopefully it shows.”

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