of this, the studio equipment was moved upstairs for Ville Valo to record his vocals, while the other members of the band flew to Las Vegas with professional skateboarder and friend of the band Bam Margera. In May 2005, HIM recruited Andy Wallace to mix the album; however, he was fired only a week later. According to Valo, Wallace lost the "melancholia" in his mixes, explaining: "It sounded fucking good, but it sounded like radio-friendly American rock [...] and we're not that." Thus, producer Tim Palmer was tasked with mixing the album at Electric Lady Studios in New York, after which the album was mastered by Stephen Marcussen at Sterling Sound. Originally planned as In the Nightside of Eden, the album's title was changed to Dark Light, because the band felt that the latter would be a more memorable title, seeing as how this would be HIM's first album to be officially released in Japan, Australia and North America. The title Dark Light was inspired by a book of the same name by Mette Newth, and was also thought up as a play on words; Ville Valo's last name translates to "light", and "dark light" in Finnish would be "pimeä valo", which in turn would mean that Ville Valo was "mad". Dark Light also continues the band's tradition of "contradictions in [album] titles". The cover art of Dark Light was designed by Matt Taylor and Sonny Gerasimowicz. Music and lyrics According to Valo, the band entered the studio with the idea of creating a cross between Black Sabbath's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Achtung Baby by U2, and Dark Light has been described as more "polished" and "accessible" than HIM's previous albums. The first half of the record was written long before entering the studio, while the second half was composed a month and a half prior, after Valo threw away much of the original material, because "it was too slow". According to Valo, the band's approach on Dark Light was to make the songs sound more "cinematic, epic, and close to the listeners", inspired by the works of composer Angelo Badalamenti. Valo also mentioned This Mortal Coil as an influence on the album's "spooky, eerie" sound. Lyrically, Dark Light deals mostly with themes of "girls and boys and the politics of the heart". "Vampire Heart" opens with a riff reminiscent of the theme to the 1978 film Halloween, while "Rip