"We always need a kick in the butt" 

Their first album “Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666” was released more than 12 years ago: in the meanwhile HIM has become an old hand in the music industry, but still not any quieter. And now in 2010 the guys with frontman Ville Valo deliver some strong dark rock with big melodies on their new album Screamworks. Just in time for the release Ville took some time for an interview with Triggerfish.

Triggerfish: Hei Ville, where are you at the moment? 

I’m in Zurich promoting our new album. Later I’m off to Stuttgart to talk to some people as well. Then there are a couple of special release gigs in Europe. Next week we’re gonna fly to Australia, then we’re gonna tour the UK and a bit of Europe. After that we’re heading to North America, then there are a couple of summer festivals and then another tour through Europe in September approximately. 

No, it’s not that bad. We now know the plan for springtime. We’ll see how the album’s gonna do and if there’s enough demand for us touring more. 

These days your new album is gonna be released. What’s the biggest difference compared to “Venus Doom”? 

It’s directly in your face and more uptempo. It’s very melodic, we’ve always done very melodic music. More like “The Cult” than “Black Sabbath”. And more 80s, after 'Venus Doom' being more 70s. So our next album might sound like early 90s. And the next one after that might sound like our first one again. (laughs) 

Do you like 80s music? Your sound is being compared to Depeche Mode and a-ha... 

... you have to consider that Depeche Mode and a-ha are still big in business. DM has had a long career and I fell in love with their music in the early 90s when “Violator” came out. Shortly after that was “Song of Faith and Devotion”. When I was a child I was listening to those things on the radio, a-ha, Nik Kershaw, Madonna and all that. My schoolfriends and I were listening to Kiss and Mötley Crüe, so 80s metal, as well. I grew up with the music of this time and now it’s like a trip back into your own youth. It was a good decade concerning big songs and big melodies. I’ve always loved big melodies. 

For “Screamworks” you worked with a new producer. How did that come about? 

Tim Palmer, our former producer, mixed “Love Metal”, “Dark Light” and “Venus Doom” and we’ve been good friends. But then we wanted to try something new. Just take a risk and do something fresh even if that might not be the right expression for it. Then I met with a couple of producers, Matt among them. We were born the same year and he’s been listening to the same kind of music as I was. So we had the same reference points. It was great and it was a lot of fun working with him. We’ve tried something different and measured by our demands it’s become very good. 

Which song on the album do you like most? 

 (ponders) 

Or don’t you have a special favourite? 

Usually I don’t. There’s always a reason why songs make it on the album. I don’t like writing songs just to fill the album. You just try your best and put different emotions into a song. So my favourite song keeps on changing. We haven’t even started touring so this is gonna change it as well. At the moment I like the first single “Heartkiller”, “Like St. Valentine”, “Acoustic Funeral”, “Scared to Death”, “Katherine Wheel”, ... I like a lot of them. Songs like “Katherine Wheel” or “Scared to Death” sound pretty simple but it took me a long time to get them right. Not in the studio but in my head. 

It’s not difficult to motivate yourself to write a new song. But it’s difficult to motivate yourself to talk about a new album. There’s always the next catastrophe waiting for us around the corner. This may be technical problems or something else. This time it went pretty well. We’ve been rehearsing a lot, more than ever again for an album. That was pretty crazy in a positive sense. We’ve put a lot of energy into this album. We always need a kick in the butt. There has to be a first single-release to get everyone excited. You’re always afraid of the whole process. After all it takes a lot of time to do an album. 

How do you feel about still playing old songs like “Join me” live? 

It’s pretty simple. We smoked so much weed that we can’t remember anything anyway. So playing “Join me” always feels like the first time. (laughs) Seriously, there seem to be songs which mean something to people and they like us to play them live. And people like different songs in differend countries, it’s real fun. There are those songs which I wrote in my first rented flat in Helsinki on my 4-string bass and in my underwear. This was more than 13 years ago and we still play those things live. This is just crazy. 

You’ve had quite a lot of side projects in the last couple of years. Is there anything new planned? 

At the moment, no. I’ve done some backing vocals for Anathema. But I don’t even know yet if they’ve even used them, I haven’t heard it yet. The song’s called “Angels Walk Among Us”. And Linde, our guitar player, is soon gonna release a solo album which he recorded last year. The music is really heavy. He’s been working on that while I was writing songs for HIM and he’d had some time off. So he put his ideas and riffs into effect in a soloalbum. Our keyboard player Burton writes music for filmlets and has another band but which plays live only infrequently. Drummer Gas has always had different projects. He plays drums in 5 bands, sings for 2 bands and plays the guitar in 7 bands. That’s just how he is. However my musical needs at the moment are being satisfied in this strange band called HIM. 

Interview done Feb 12th 2010 by Sonja Riegel.

Source of original interview can be found here.