133_him.indd 1
7/24/2008 3:46:08 PM
FEATURE 72
What H.I.M. Says I DON’T KNOW WHY I CALL THEM “A GUILTY PLEASURE,” BECAUSE IT’S NOT LIKE SCENE KIDS HATE THEM OR SOMETHING, BUT THIS BAND IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES TO LISTEN TO. MAYBE IT’S THE HALF UPSIDE-DOWN STAR / HALF HEART SYMBOL THAT THE BAND USES (THE HEARTAGRAM) OR THE RELIGIOUS LYRICAL IMAGERY TURNED ON ITS SIDE. OR MAYBE IT’S JUST THE DARK, GLOOMY SOUND ... BUT H.I.M. (RUMORED TO STAND FOR “HIS INFERNAL MAJESTY,” I.E. SATAN) HAS KIND OF A REPUTATION THAT FLIRTS WITH THE HOLLYWOOD PERCEPTION OF EVIL. I GUESS THEY’RE GUILTY OF BEING EVIL. REGARDLESS OF HOW THE BAND IS BRANDED OR IMAGED, IT WAS A VERY ENJOYABLE TRANSATLANTIC PHONE CONVERSATION THAT WAS HAD WITH FRONTMAN/LYRICIST VILLE VALO.
DVP: Sex – a gift from God? Or a product of evolution? What are the ramifi cations of each? VV: I don’t know. I’m trying to find out. You know, I guess, it’s, um ... it does have a lot of things to do with evolution, if you do believe in Darwinism, and, uh, I’m not quite sure about that. But either, you know, I’ve gone ahead... I don’t believe in God so… Looks like I haven’t studied Darwinism too much. Uh, gift from God – definitely not! More like a curse from the devil I guess.
(laughs) So, uh, it’s a great question. You left me speechless here.
Well, as an artist, I believe you’ve gone on record as listing Type O Negative and Black Sabbath as infl uences. Yet neither of those two bands have the kind of alternate universe or almost a complete mythology of visual and thematic impact as you guys. To what do you attribute this and what sort of thought went into this on your end? Um, well, you know, I grew up listening to Kiss and Iron Maiden – bands like that. They always had a very strong visual aspect to what they did. Iron Maiden, well, they still have Eddie their monster, and Kiss had the make up thing going on and all the ... well, you know what they were all about back in the day; and Led Zeppelin had the four symbols, and I always considered that to be very important if you’re in a rock band, as well. I wasn’t consciously thinking of it while drawing down the symbol for our band – the heartogram – I was just thinking that’d be great if we would have a logo that would transcend words and, you know, nationalities, and religions, and political beliefs. It would just be just like the Nike swoosh for us. And, for example, that thing has just started to live its own life. So, it’s something that’s out of our hands completely. Which is very exciting, at least for me. And, about the mythology: I don’t
know (bleep) about any mythology. We’re just five good ol’ childhood friends who play in a rock band and (are) musically Sabbath-y. We were born in the way that they, you know, they came from a very rough neighborhood and they came from working class families from a little town in England. And where we come from, Helsinki, Finland, which is a tiny country – a remote one... We never thought that we would have the possibilities. There was access to Sabbath, seeing what they did, you know, proved a lot of people wrong and then gave us the hope to be able to believe that it is possible to succeed – even though you live behind God’s back, so to speak. So musically we have a lot of influences, or at least I do. You know, somebody was asking what we were musically called. You know, it says we coined the term “love metal” ages ago. You know, a lot of people do have a problem, because metal in itself is usually very loveless. It’s very macho. It’s very misogynous, or at least the traditional sense of Heavy Metal is, so I just call our music nowadays Neutered Metal. So, I think that fits perfectly into what we’re doing. You know, its, uh… We’re just, uh... How do I put it? I guess we’re metal lacking balls.
Now, to help me transcribe this later, to make sure I heard you right, did you say Nudist Metal? No, Neutered.
Oh, Neutered Metal, Okay. Gotcha! Yeah, slightly diff erent, but some similarities to Nudist Metal, I guess. Nudist, yeah. Well, our bass player loves playing nude, but unfortunately there’s laws against it. Especially when it comes to our bass player, there should be laws against it. So, he’s not exciting, he’s very hairy. But yeah, I don’t know what sense you were talking about the mythology or the alternate world so to speak, or where HIM things happen, or whatever. I don’t know what that is. I don’t have a clue. Um, it’s great if