The early 2000s saw HIM rise from Finland’s best-kept secret into genuine global metal stars. By the time of 2007’s Venus Doom album, frontman Ville Valo was one of rock’s most recognisable faces – but, as he told Metal Hammer while the band were wrapping up recording the album, that was part of the problem.
It’s hardly a scene of rock‘n’roll mayhem. A multiplying cluster of empty cigarette packs are messily strewn near a stack of newly bought books and DVDs. Movies like Fargo and A Scanner Darkly freely intermingle with unopened rock biographies like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and a well-thumbed copy of, uh… Making Waves: The Autobiography by David Hasselhoff. Anywhere else there’d be nothing to distinguish the room from countless other dwellings around the world. Considering it’s set inside the plush interior of London’s Soho Hotel on a Friday night – with the bustling night life of one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities just a few metres below – and, that it’s currently occupied by one Ville Valo, HIM frontman. It’s a scene of bored despair.
Right now, that’s just the way he likes it. It’s here that for the past three days he’s watched daytime life go by through the window, only to hit the city’s dingiest, most booze-soaked night-spots at sundown with the intention of, ‘getting annihilated’. It’s impossible not to wonder what His Infernal Majesty, currently sporting flowing locks and recently grown facial hair of Shakespearean proportions, is doing here, and in this state.
Considering he’s just finished a year’s worth of dogged touring on the back of 2005’s hopelessly romantic Dark Light album, not forgetting the modest purchase of a five-floor defensive tower built in 1842 on the outskirts of his hometown Helsinki, it’s surprising to find him here. But study this mundane scene a little closer, and you’ll notice an item of distinct interest. It’s a five-track demo of HIM’s next record, and for the past couple of days Valo’s been in an intense series of meetings with his label to decide exactly what the next step will be in HIM’s ongoing evolution.
But that isn’t right now, and that isn’t what Valo wants to talk about. If anything can be said of the Finnish frontman who’s ostensibly seen less than a million faces but no doubt genuinely appreciated them all, he’s terminally reclusive, shy, and – perpetual stage appearances aside – seems far happier to blend into the shadows of his adoptive city than bask in its easily found limelight. What’s really on his mind right now isn’t music, fame or his ever-growing cult of celebrity. It’s that he comes here for peace because he gets little at home. He doesn’t blame the ghosts mind you, which he confesses he’s convinced live there as he clutches a second can of Stella from a dozen bought for the very occasion of this interview.
“I leave the lights on for them,” he says with his usual wink, always leaving you to decide whether he’s completely serious or not. “I’m scared of a lot of things, but not ghosts.”
What does scare him though is a seemingly endless stream of slightly over-dedicated HIM fans on the prowl in Helsinki, searching for the baritone singer’s abode. Some of them find it, and because, ‘text messages are the key to the castle’, Valo’s having his doorbell removed.
“It’s a pain in the ass because people start knocking on the door at nine in the morning,” he says. “There’s nothing really negative, but it’s my home. It’s the only place where I can have my peace, wear Spongebob Squarepants jammies and listen to 80s disco. Sometimes I’ll look out and there will be someone sitting underneath a tree outside for a really long time not doing anything. That’s kind of weird.”
But as settled as Ville Valo is beginning to sound, there’s very little to anchor him anywhere. You might have gleaned from the fact that he’s been fronting a band that’s been globetrotting for the better part of a decade, or one-third of his lifetime, that he doesn’t mind the transient lifestyle. But as clichéd as he’ll admit it sounds it really is the road where he finds a home. And it isn’t the comfortable lifestyle of touring that he seeks. If anything, it’s anonymity that, far from what you’d assume of one of the most recognisable men in music, he craves more than anything. London is where he finds it.
“I’ve considered moving here,” he says, settling back in his seat. “I think a lot of people are running away from a lot of issues and I might be one of them. I love the English sense of humour, the pubs. And you don’t get rednecks here. I hate New York. It’s like London’s big bad brother. This is where I find kindred spirits. For a while my whole plan was just getting a storage room for all my gear and not caring about where I live. Getting money to be able to be like a hobo for a year. I still want to do that one day.”
As for those kindred spirits, at the top of Valo’s list is ex-Napalm Death/Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, who hasn’t just served as an inspiration (‘I’ve always got a copy of Forest Of Equilibrium with me,’ he says of the doom band’s 1991 masterwork). Ville counts him among his best friends, and it’s often that the two are spotted in random London haunts going about the business of drinking. As for the doomy-aspects of HIM’s new album, Valo makes no mystery of where his inspiration comes from.
“The first time I met him I was shitting my pants because he’s a legend,” says Valo. “We met maybe five years ago. We’ve got similar ways of looking at things. And I admire him lyrically and as a person. I mean, he made me a vegetarian.”
He winces and bends over to pry off a pair of black and white gangster-style wingtip shoes he’s been taking on excruciating walks through London for the past few days. They’re positively ungainly, but as Valo explains they were bought to wear to a recent party that took place on December 6, Finnish independence day. It isn’t an occasion he’d normally celebrate, but this particular party was hosted by none other than Finnish President Tarja Halonen. He’d already turned down a few invitations to meet her on account of being away on tour.
“She was great,” he says. “Really cool and I had these great vibes from people, but I kept getting pissed off because they serve beer in less than a pint glass and its warm so I kept having to go back. It was the most boring party I’ve ever been to.”
Were you proud?
“Well,” he says, pausing to drink deep of his beery chalice. “My parents were… OK, it’s the biggest honour you can have.”
You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that Ville Valo isn’t entirely convinced as he downs the rest of his Stella and cracks open another, expertly aiming the fag hanging from his lips away from the spray.
The story of HIM’s next album really begins with the last one. Recorded at LA’s Paramour Studios, Dark Light was both the ultimate refinement of HIM’s lushly elaborate sound and a statement of the band’s intent to take America. While endless touring there pushed the release to gold status, a coup by anyone’s reckoning, Valo’s only apparent regret is that HIM probably spent too much time there, that, ’the world’s a fucking big place,’ and that, ‘you can’t do it all’.
“We didn’t tour Eastern Europe, we didn’t do anything in Finland, we skipped places because of demand,” he says. “Look, you only have 300-something days a year and at the end of the day we’ve got our own shit to do. Mige (Amour, bassist) has got to change diapers and I’ve got to write songs and sleep in the bathtub. I’m super-proud of everything. I’m in the beautiful position to still be talking about my music. I’ve never had an aspiration to be anything else. I never thought what this would bring me, whether I’d be travelling around the world or having a home. It’s all natural. There’s nothing I can compare this existence with.”
But what really happened during the last record wasn’t bigger and better touring – what he describes as, “selling the gospel” – or record sales. To Valo, the real significance of Dark Light was that, perhaps for the first time, he’d truly found his musical voice. It was the most time HIM had ever spent writing an album, so Valo chose to search for inspiration on the Sunset Strip instead of the confines of a studio. The resulting album was what Valo now describes as, ‘the most rewarding thing ever’.
“It was like a diary of my time there, and it was a great thing to do,” he says. “A lot of people want to write about what they’ve done but not me. I was writing about what I thought about because of what I was doing.”
But ask Valo whether the last year of his life has been a happy one and he looks surprised, perplexed even. He struggles to recall anything he’s done.
“You know, I was talking with a couple of friends about this and being a musician isn’t even close to another job,” he says. “People work five days a week but we might do six gigs, or no gigs. Your whole life doesn’t go by in years. It goes by in albums.”
As for the next one, it’s due to be completed on the 26th of May at Los Angeles’ Paramount C studios, perhaps better known for its rap and hip-hop artists than its goth-inspired songsmiths. Under the guidance of Dark Light producer Tim Palmer. Tentatively titled Venus Doom, it’s infused with all the romantic disillusion the name implies.
“This whole album is going to be about having sex with the devil,” says Valo. “It’s about something diabolical and profound. It’s a bed of nails. You either try to sleep standing or you lie down. It’s the most personal album that I’ve ever made.”
And with that he’s cajoled into getting up and putting the demo disc into the stereo. The most immediate and striking impression it gives is the aggression of the guitars. Guitar solos that wouldn’t offend Zakk Wylde and crunching distortion yield only to crooning lyrics like, ‘My heart’s a graveyard baby and to evil we’ll make love’ and the more cryptic, ‘At first kiss the seeds of hatred are sown’.
As smooth as the delivery is there’s an anger and indignation there that hasn’t been heard before. As to the source of it Valo won’t elaborate, but there’s a thread to these first inklings of a record and it’s dyed in angry red. Is Valo getting jaded? He has just turned 30 after all, or in Ville-world, exactly three years older than his idol Jim Morrison was when he died.
“But I’m three years younger than Jesus,” he says with a laugh. “I’m just waiting to be crucified.”
The reviews are yet to come.
“Indeed, indeed,” he says, still grinning. “It’s my personal way to Golgotha.”
But the notion that Venus Doom will really be HIM’s first foray into a new, disillusioned world is swiftly shot down by the frontman. As he sees it, it’s just a new chapter in an old book written not by him but everyone who’s ever suffered a broken heart. Still, it’s impossible to avoid the question whether by saying the same things over and over again – and even the most casual perusal of HIM’s back-catalogue reveals that these themes are nothing new – you lose some sincerity after awhile. Valo appreciates the analyis. Then rips it up.
“Think about the hundreds of millions of people saying their prayers every night,” he says. “You can repeat certain things until they become a mantra, and ‘I love you’ is the best mantra in the world. People grow. Maybe it’s their beer gut or in the way they look at things, but changes in your life give you new angles on old things and they let you see things you didn’t see before. I love being able to pour my heart out. And I need to.”
But it doesn’t sound like you’re very in love with the idea of being in love at the moment.
“I’m getting older but not more jaded,” he says with a puff of smoke, finishing. “That’s bullshit. And the sex really does get better.”
But, ‘at first kiss the seeds of hatred are sown’? ‘My heart’s a graveyard’? That is certainly cynical by anyone’s standard.
“But I think that’s so true, and so complete a sentence,” he says. “‘My heart’s a graveyard baby/And to evil we make love on passion’s killing floor/In my arms you won’t sleep safely/And of lust we are reborn on passion’s killing floor,’’ he corrects. “It’s funny and deep at the same time. That’s the way I like it,” he says, shrugging apologetically. “All the songs are really about sex anyway.”
He goes on to explain between mighty sips of beer that, ‘not all beds are rosy,’ and that love more often than not ends disastrously, even when things actually do work out. Venus Doom may be about love and loss and personal tragedy, but mostly it’s about, ‘an S&M aesthetic,’ that dictates the two flip-sides of the same coin, the pleasure but more the pain that come with falling in love with someone.
“It’s a mental struggle, an emotional struggle,” he says. “I’m talking about ideals here. At the end of the day you completely trust the person and you’re the most vulnerable you’ve ever been since being in the womb. It’s about the security that you give up, and what you lose rather than gain by being with someone. Shit will hit the fan, just hopefully not on the first night.”
But however convinced Valo is that he isn’t a broken record on the love front, he’s the first to admit that he has other interests and not even HIM will necessarily be his only pursuit for the rest of his life. Just a few nights prior, on a drunken bender with some other London based friends, he laid the groundwork of ‘Crack Smoking Ninja Pirates On Speed’, which he explains is his retirement plan. Basically, waiting until he’s 70 and no longer has any responsibilities, he’ll buy a pirate ship and support a crack habit through the maritime plunder of small Scandinavian ports. But press him on the matter, and he becomes far more serious about the endeavour. The joke isn’t actually that far from the truth.
“I’ve actually always wanted to be a hunter, a cowboy,” he says, though not of the animal killing-kind he’s quick to point out. “I’ve always been into the idea of searching out the truth behind the Bermuda Triangle. In the Western World you’re in a very egocentric position, very self-centred, and it’s easy to deny things you can’t explain. A lot of people deny things just because they can’t explain them.”
Valo’s fascination with the occult – specifically Aleister Crowley – 19th century secret societies, and all paranormal and the downright odd, no doubt fuels his fascination with such things, and his plans for investigating such things are very real. Just a year ago he was working on a documentary on the said Bermuda Triangle with a friend, an ex-HIM member who played synthesizer on their very first demo. “Travelling the world and eating monkey brains,” is, as Valo says, a, “really fucking great idea,” but then, “I’m living a life now where I can’t really do anything like that anymore.”
Your life’s all about life’s mysteries…
“Yeah,” he says, smiling. “The Bermuda Triangle isn’t that far away from love is it? It’s like the universal experience of hundreds of millions of people. Love actually resembles the Bermuda Triangle when you think about it,” he stops there, his eyes light up, and he can’t help himself. “Especially if she has a really big bush.”
But are you happy?
“Um…” The laughter and smile is immediately wiped from his face. “I’m going in the right direction. The end is always around the corner.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 165
