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HIM - WE LOVE SABBATH
Interview by Paolo Bianco
H.I.M., His Infernal Majesty. And yet the two members of HIM seated in front of me in a rainy day of the end of September don't seem so diabolic: the singer Ville Valo and the bassist Migé Amour (his real name is Mikko Henrik Julius Paananen, would you think is other than finnish?) are in Italy to promote the band's new album "Venus Doom" and stay quiet around a table, drinking ginger and water or smoking while they answer my questions. They are not diabolic, then, but they are damnedly intelligent: very seldom I met an artist able to quote Voltaire, Dante and The Holy Bible, ant to know when it's the moment of laughing at himself as well. But Ville Valo is like this: far more well disposed by person than you could ever imagine, always ready to laugh (it's a pity: with a finnish humor!!!) and to talk about his passion for the extreme metal, while Migé is drawing on a paper and speaks just to make some specification. I think HIM, even in the sector of metal, are known by everyone as the inventors of "love metal" with all that such a definition brings (accusations of being 'commercial', teenagers and goth fans and so on). The risk is to lose the real point, which is music. About this everyone has an opinion, but I think it's music the most surprising element in the band's new album, since the atmosphere is changed and the Black Sabbath's influence can be heard in a clear and unexpected way. Let's start just from here....let's talk about music, finally!
MS: "VENUS DOOM" MARKS A WELL DEFINED MUSIC CHANGEMENT, TOWARDS DOOM ATMOSHPERES IN PURE BLACK SABBATH STYLE. DO YOU THINK YOUR FANS ARE READY FOR SUCH AN ALBUM?
MIGE': We were ready and that's the point.
VILLE: We obviously are grown up either as a band or as people, so for us it is impossible going on to compose songs in the same way we did at "Razorblade Romance" times. Many of our fans are grown up with us so they'll see this our new step towards tha maturation as a natural process of evolution. Other people, who maybe knows us for a short time...I don't know how they'll take the cd. It will be a good test, maybe, to understand how deep they are interested in our band.
MS:DO YOU THINK ANY FOURTY YEARS OLD FAN OF BLACK SABBATH WOULD EVER APPRECIATE YOUR NEW CD?
MIGE': We will know it during our tour. It would be great if after a gig someone around fifty years old comes closer with his jeans jacket full of patches of Meat Loaf and Lizzy Borden saying our concert brought him back in time to thirty years ago, to the Black Sabbath days...
VILLE:We're getting closerand closer to that period of life that many call "middle-age crisis", when you go back in time to re-discover the myths you had when you were a teen ager, hoping to feel the same. For us, this means listening to Black Sabbath, we listened to Sabbath again and again before entering our studios to record "Venus Doom" and the effects can be heard. Obviously we don't even think to recreate those sounds, but we clearly are inspired by them, yet keeping our mood and our peculiar sound.
MS: I CAN REMEMBER THAT AT YOUR LAST ITALIAN CONCERT, TOWARDS THE END, VILLE STARTED A SORT OF MANTRA INCITING THE AUDIENCE TO REPEAT 'BLACK SABBATH', WHILE THE BAND PLAYED A JAM SESSION IN A DOOM STYLE. THE AUDIENCE SEEMED QUITE PUZZLED THEN, MANY DIDN'T SEEM TO KNOW EVEN WHO 'BLACK SABBATH' WERE...
VILLE:It's not important if that experiment has failed. Maybe in the whole club, which was sold out, just 200 people knew who Black Sabbath are and finished to appreciate more our gig. Maybe other 200 went back home and took information about the band I mentioned, discovering a band that, according to me, changed the history of metal. The fact is: if I succeed in showing to someone that there is good music out there even if it's no more on the charts and has been composed thirty years ago...well I'd say my mission is done!
MS: AGAIN, ABOUT YOUR MUSICAL SUGGESTIONS, I REMEMBER LAST SPRING DURING AN ENGLISH FESTIVAL YOU PLAYED A COVER OF NAPALM DEATH'S 'YOU SUFFER' AND THEIR FANS DIDN'T SEEM TO APPRECIATE IT...
VILLE: It's all about having sense of humor or not. 'You suffer' is a song that lasts 20 seconds, if I wouldn't have announced it as a Napalm Death's cover none have noticed it, but we are great fans of this band so we wanted to pay homage to them in their hometown, Birmingham.
MS: LET'S TALK ABOUT THE ALBUM. FIRST OF ALL I KNOW THAT A 'SAMPLE' OF THE CD HAS BEEN HEARD AT THE END OF JULY IN THE "TRANSFORMERS" SOUNDTRACK WHERE THERE WAS 'PASSIONS KILLING FLOOR'. BUT HONESTLY: DO YOU THINK IT WAS THE RIGHT PLACE, AND THE RIGHT MOVIE, TO RELEASE YOUR SONG?
MIGE': Well we don't care so much where our songs appear, we are interested in reaching the largest possible number of people. They said "Transformers" was going to become a blockbuster so we gave our permission to use our new song on that soundtrack, that's all.
MS: SO CONFESS: WHEN YOU WERE CHILDREN YOU LIKED TO PLAY WITH TRANSFORMERS?
VILLE: No, I've never played with 'Transformers'. I've always preferred the 'Star Wars' models: I had a lot of puppets, also in limited edition...
MS: HOLY SOCKS! DID YOU THROW THEM? YOU KNOW IF YOU PUT THEM ON E-BAY YOU HAD A LOT OF MONEY BACK???
VILLE: Don't tell me! I've thrown them away years ago, a lot before e-bay was invented. But I regret so much I got rid of them!
MS:THE TITLE OF THE ALBUM 'VENUS DOOM' WHAT KIND OF IMAGES SHOULD RECALL?
VILLE: If this is not too clear yet, we are great fans of doom-metal and this time we decided to homage the whole music gender not only with our music but also with the album title. Venus...well the first idea we have in our minds is the planet Venus, since we are fond of sciencefiction, but you can also think to the goddess of beauty or to some illness...!"
MS:THE THING WE IMMEDIATELY CAN NOTICE IS THAT YOU USE MUCH LESS KEYBOARDS. WHAT DOES YOUR KEYBOARDER BURTON THINK ABOUT IT?
VILLE: Well in the band we are in democracy and we never imposed to him to play less, we simply wanted this album to be more direct and harder, as a strike in your face. There are anyway instrumental moments with their keyboards, Burton has still his employ don't worry!"
MIGE’: I think Burton appreciated a lighter charge of work on this album, since he just had a child and he succeeded in passing much more time with his family. We recorded the cd in Finland (instead of in the USA, like the former one), just to allow to him to stay nearer home.
MS: THEY SAID YOU DECIDE TO PUT JUST NINE SONGS ON THE ALBUM TAKING INSPIRATION BY THE NINE CIRCLES OF DANTE’S “HELL”. IS THAT TRUE?
VILLE: Well…it’s not exactly like this…it is just someone who commented about our album with “only” nine songs. In a first time I answered obviously that quality is important and not quantity (moreover one of the songs lasts more than 10 minutes!) and then I noticed this coincidence, because in those days I was just reading Dante’ “Hell” and the number 9 often came up in the story…
MS: DID YOU READ THEN DANTE’ S “PURGATORY” AND “PARADISE” OR DID YOU STOP AT THE COOLEST PART OF THE “DIVINE COMEDY”???
VILLE: To be honest I still have to finish “Hell”. I’ve read a good part of it , but not the whole, because it is so fucking difficult to understand! It is more difficult than the Bible! I read the Old Testament years ago, just to understand what Christian people find in this book, but I found it very boring and I didn’t finish that too!
MS: READING YOUR SONGS TITLES, IT ALMOST SEEMS THE ALBUM IS A CONCEPT ABOUT DEATH.
VILLE: Well, with a doom kind music you must add deep and heavy lyrics, we can absolutely sing about how it is good to buy an ice cream on Saturday afternoon, looking girls on a walk. I’ve grown up listening to Ozzy Osbourne’s solo works and all of them have very deep words, about the self destruction of a man. Music is my way to discharge, and I can put all of my negative feelings in a song. If the album is gloomy, this means that, once it is recorded, I am happier and able to smile. And if I’m not recording something when I get angry, I put on a Carcass cd to discharge!
MS: THE GLOOMY ATMOSPHERE OF THE ALBUM COMES ALSO FROM A SAD THING THAT HAPPENED TO YOU: THE SUICIDE OF A FRIEND. CAN I ASK YOU WHAT ARE YOUR PERSONAL OPINIONS ABOUT SUICIDE, BESIDES THIS TRAGIC EVENT?
VILLE: If I’m not wrong, Voltaire said that suicide is the only act of true freedom that has been allowed to a man. It’s a selfish act, with which everyone can manage definitely his/her own life, while in every other decision there is always some outer element that can enter. I haven’t any “opinion” about suicide and I don’t judge whoever does it. Of course people who remain have to face its consequences and it’s not easy, but it’s not easy to shot yourself as well, or to throw yourself down from a building. More than about suicide, then, we should talk about the causes that bring to this extreme action. There are people in this world who have nothing: no social assistance, no friendship, no home…yet they find the strength to go on and even to smile from time to time. At the same time there are people who have everything: money, women, work and finish hanged anyway. Why? I think these are answers too complicate for us, human mind is fascinating for this too. Personally I can say that , like maybe all of us, years ago I thought to finish all, sometimes. But at the end I found inside the strength I needed to go on despite of the people who despised me. I wouldn’t have surrendered, I wouldn’t have committed suicide. And here I am, it has been long years since I haven’t thought to my relationship with suicide.
MS: YET YOUR STEREOTYPED FAN IS DESCRIBED AS A YOUNG GOTH FLIRTING WITH DEATH…OR AM I WRONG?
VILLE: But in the end who has never thought to suicide, above all in his teen age years? According to me, thinking to suicide and even imagine your own funeral is almost a positive activity, in the sense it occupies your mind, it almost makes you laugh when you think about the ceremony so we take off our attention from the gloomy thoughts that were bringing us to suicide. Talking aboit the relationship between HIM and depressed fans, well, the most part of the letters I receive contains thanks and descriptions of how my music helped them in some hard times, how they could understand they are not lonely and so on. I think this is the power of music: it helps you to understand that there are other people like you. The fact is our fans maybe can feel some sadness from time to time, but I’ve always received positive letters and none spoke about suicide.
MS: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR IN YOUR FANS CAN BE SEEN ON THEIR SKIN AND IN YOUR WEBSITE WHERE YOU HAVE A CONTEST TO FIND THE BEST TATTOO REPRESENTING THE HEARTAGRAM, YOUR LOGO. WHAT’S THE EFFECT OF KNOWING YOU MARKED THOUSANDS PEOPLE WITH THAT SIGN?
MIGE’: It is a very good feeling.
VILLE: Yes it is a positive thing. It gives force to the sense of belonging to a group. The fact that we too have the heartagram tattooed on our bodies connects us to the fans even more deeply, also about the function I’ve just spoken about, of help through our music and so on.
MS: SINCE WE WERE SPEAKING ABOUT OUR OWN FUNERALS…I CLOSE MY INTERVIEW ASKING HOW WILL BE YOURS?
VILLE: Nice question. Well, I imagine it as a great party, but the cakes will suck!!!
MIGE’: You know, it’s been so far since I wasn’t thinking about that…I don’t remember how I imagined it. At the end I understood something about funerals: it’s the only party you don’t have to worry about! I let to others the decisions about it, above all about the cakes, but I hope mine will be better than Ville’s!
)
) Но Вилле Вало именно такой: гораздо более доброжелательно настроенный, чем можно себе представить, всегда готовый посмеяться (вот только жаль, что юмор у него финский) :haha: и поговорить о своей страсти к экстремальному металлу. Миге тем временем чего-то рисует на бумаге и открывает рот только для того, чтобы сделать какое-нибудь дополнение. Полагаю, ХИМ, хотя бы в области металла, известны каждому как изобретатели «лав метал» со всеми вытекающими (обвинениями в коммерции, в том, что их слушают только подростки и готы, и т.п.) Тут мы рискуем отойти от сути – от музыки. Об этом у каждого есть свое мнение, но я думаю, что музыка – самая удивительная составляющая нового альбома группы, поскольку атмосфера изменилась, и влияние Black Sabbath слышится неожиданно и отчетливо. Вот как раз с этого и начнем... давайте поговорим о музыке наконец! 
