 The band describes their "Sabbath-meets-Depeche Mode sound" as love metal, the title of their fourth album in 2003.Their subsequent release two years later "Dark Light" was their breakthrough album in the United States with a debut at number 18 on the Billboard charts, a feat exceeded when their next album "Venus Doom" in 2007 made a debut at number 12.Critic Lance Teegarden of PopMatters notes that HIM is "not the sort of act that conjures up a lukewarm response [as] people either like them or discredit them outright".