HIM Releasing "Horny" Album In February

Horny goth girls, take note: Finnish alt.rockers HIM will return with their seventh studio album, Screamworks: Love In Theory And Practice, on Feb. 9.

Singer/guitarist Ville Valo, guitarist Mikko "Linde" Lindstrom, bassist Mikko "Mige" Paananen, keyboardist Janne "Burton" Purrtinen and drummer Mika "Gas Lipstick" Karppinen worked with producer Matt Squire (3OH!3, Saosin) on the follow-up to 2007's Venus Doom.

Screamworks will be preceded by first single "Heartkiller," which is out on Monday (Dec. 7).

Valo describes the album as a "mental boner." No, seriously.

"Lyrically, it's the most sexual [album], the most horny one, we've ever made," he recently told Metal Hammer magazine. "The horny and the horned. Like the Impaled Nazarene song. It's got that and a sense of immediacy: 'I want it now, now, now.' It's not about being poetic or forlorn about something that is about to happen, it's actually about something that is happening at this very moment in time.

"I like the immediacy of it. There's a lot of information put in short songs and they don't let go. That was the whole vibe for me. You should have seen me working the vocals out in the middle of the night, amongst my taxidermy owls in the tower screaming my guts out, unable to stop until 9:00 a.m. and then sleeping on a couch for two hours before starting again. So that whole process of the album is very close to that metal boner that just didn't go away."

Rammstein, take note: You have some competition in the "horny metal" genre.

HIM plan to tour heavily in support of Screamworks, and will begin their touring in 2010 by playing the Soundwave Festival in Australia.

You can see HIM here:

Dec. 28-31 Helsinki, Finland @ Helldone Festival
Feb. 20 Brisbane, Australia @ RNA Showgrounds (Soundwave Festival)
Feb. 21 Sydney, Australia @ Eastern Creek Raceway (Soundwave Festival)
Feb. 26 Melbourne, Australia @ Melbourne Showgrounds (Soundwave Festival)
Feb. 27 Adelaide, Australia @ Bonython Park (Soundwave Festival)
March 1 Perth, Australia @ Steel Blue Oval (Soundwave Festival)

Here's what's on Screamworks: Live In Theory And Practice:

"In Venere Veritas"
"Scared To Death"
"Heartkiller"
"Dying Song"
"Disarm Me (With Your Loneliness)"
"Love, The Hardest Way"
"Katherine Wheel"
"In The Arms Of Rain"
"Ode To Solitude"
"Shatter Me With Hope"
"Acoustic Funeral (For Love In Limbo)"
"Like St. Valentine"
"The Foreboding Sense Of Impending Happiness"