HIM

‘The best reward is to play a gig’ says Ville Valo, in a low, raspy, smoker’s baritone. ‘To see how your music reflects on the people and how music is such a fucking universal thing’. Vocal-lyricist for self-proclaimed ‘love metalers’ - HIM – and beauteous demigod to a million wrist-slashing females, Valo is simply ‘killing braincells watching American TV’ when I catch up with him.

From his pre-gig Norfolk, Virginia hotel suite, he ponders the relationship his music has with time. ‘I can play a stupid little ditty called ‘Join Me In Death’ which I wrote on acoustic guitar twelve years ago whilst sitting in my first rented apartment in my underwear’. And the revelation? ‘Now, all of a sudden, 5000 miles away and twelve years on, there are people who are weeping when they hear it. Hopefully for the right reasons. As an achievement, that’s the kind of thing that never ceases to surprise the whole band’.

Valo’s band name is an acronym for ‘His Infernal Majesty’. Their latest, and sixth, album, is called Venus Doom. This album contains, amongst others, tracks entitled ‘Love In Cold Blood’, ‘Cyanide Sun’ and ‘Song Or Suicide’. Clearly, this is a man who could be construed as being ‘quite dark’. Unsurprisingly, Valo admits ‘there is doom and gloom all over the realm of music and I find that comforting. I was blessed with the opportunity of life kicking me in the face continuously for the passed ten years so I don’t have any fucking problems with getting myself into a dark place. The only problem is getting out’.

On various levels, the creative process in the construction of music has been very cathartic for Valo and possibly the only thing keeping him sane. ‘It’s been my lighthouse, my beacon’ he confesses, before launching into the complexities running through the new album. ‘It’s a bit more Sabbathy and left-of-centre than Dark Light’ - the doom-rocking album that crowned HIM the first Finnish band to go Gold in the US - ‘it’s definitely the most musical album we’ve done so far’.

The disregard for boundaries is the reasoning for the lean, but categorically achieved with an acutely insightful mind. ‘There’s a lot more instrumentation going on. On that level, it’s maybe risky. But what the fuck is risky anyway? Risky is about doing something stupid like going into a bar, drinking too much and seeing where you wake up the next morning’. A comment made all the more compelling when uttered by a man with plenty of experience to trade. His battle with alcoholism ended with rehab but the ‘risk’ was potently evident for much of his professional career. ‘We’ve played shit gigs. Most of them I don’t remember because of intoxication. I’ve heard terrible stories afterwards about how I’ve ruined everything because I’ve been so fucked up. It’s easy for me to say ‘I don’t remember, I am the Lizard King and I can do everything and anything’’.

With Venus Doom, this new-found focus has paid dividends for the band. It entered the Top 20 album chart on both sides of the pond. The level of expertise selected to guide the project was doubtless a bearing factor on its outcome. Producers, Tim Palmer (U2, The Cure, Ozzy Osbourne) and Hiili Hiilesmaa (Apocalyptica), are no strangers to the band having both been on board for previous HIM collaborations. Valo saw the opportunity as ‘a nice combination to work with two people who know us personally. We were able to tell them what we didn’t want. We didn’t have to explain everything from scratch’. This is a goal HIM have always aspired to and Valo frankly offers affirmation. ‘We thought it would be great to one day record with an English producer. We have, so a lot of dreams have come true’.

The adaptation to the live format has received a ‘surprisingly good’ reaction in the US. This comes after a lengthy stretch of touring that involved a headline slot at the European Give It A Name tour, a billing at the Projekt Revolution festival, and a prestigious airing as Metallica’s tour support. Yet although, to most, this might sound like the pinnacle of a musician’s journey, Valo keenly points out that the adventure ultimately isolates you. ‘It was crazy flying back home after being away for twelve months and not realising that this is the place where you live. It was illogical’.

Valo concludes that the tour has been so lengthy that ‘it’s all a big blur. We basically haven’t had any time off’. But he forgets that it isn’t over just yet. A UK tour beckons in December, as does Australasia come March 2008. At least it wont be dark down under. Or will it?