one in million
13 years ago
Friday 5 March 2010
Let's take you on a tour to HIM and back dwell in the past, look in to a future. See where it all got started and read where it's heading to. Know the history.
There he was, working behind the counter of his father's Sex Shop. It was all right for the time being, but the boy with Angel's face and devilish smile had a dream. Disillusioned with the music he heard around him, he wanted something more. The music was lacking in soul and imagination. He wanted something that could move you, bring you to the verge of tears, leave a mark on you. And he fulfilled his dream.
Ville Hermanni Valo formed HIM in the summer 1995, gathering around him some old friends who shared his vision of a band of rock. Ville himself calls "Love Metal". Depeche Mode meets Dimmu Borgir in a David Lynch Movie....
"You're so close! Love Metal is music that includes elements of pop, metal, feelings that have before the first touch, before the first kiss. Love Metal is like the movie poster Gone With The Wind"
No wonder than that HIM has chosen to cover Chris Isaak's Wicked Game. The HIM vision has layers of hard-edged guitars on it but the soul-searching inner qualities of that song are left intact.
"I could relate to the mood in that song, it contains that same kind of melancholy feeling that you can find in our music. After all, we have much more in common with a guy like Chris Isaak than any testosterone-heavy metal band. I hat joyful music! For you is my 'headbanging anthem', if you know what i mean? When Love and Death Embrace on the other hand is my version of all those cheesy 80's pop ballads."
Ville Hermanni Valo-half rock front man andhalf suffering poet. Come on stage with a bottle of red wine in one hand and a ciggarette on the other, a Jim Morrisonesque figure with deeply emotional voice, he instantly demands your attention. His mother's Hungarian ancestors are responsible for his dark looks and that drop of Dracula's Blood that he has in his system. HIM stands for His Infernal Majesty.
'It stands for entirely of my reputation of being a truly infernal ladies man, totally hopeless. I get burned time after time again. His Infernal Majesty has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of religious beliefs or ideologies - just in our context 666 has nothing to do with the number of the beast. When i read about those people that burned historical Finnish Churches and who names us along with Black Sabbath and Dimmu Borgir as being their main source of inspiration, i was deeply offended!
HIM's debut album is entitiled Greatest Love songs vol.666 and it has a track on it called You Sweet Six Six Six. For Ville and HIM, 666 is all about contradictions, the good and the evil in love. Love that's larger than life and yet very close to death, the never-ending duel between the carnal and the pure, spiritual sides.
"666 is something you're possessed with something you just have to get although you know it will destroy you in the end. Is' something sweet but it has a bitter aftertaste, like Belgian beer or something, ha-ha..."
Greatest Lovesongs vol.666 contains 9 songs of which seven are originals written by Ville Valo. A second cover version is a stunning, slowed down reading of a Blue Oyster Cult's mid-70's classic (Don't Fear) The Reaper.
That androgynous figure on the cover of Greatest Lovesongs vol.666, burning in the fires of hell and staring into nowhere, that is Ville Valo. A guy who started his musical career learning the bass entirely because of Gene Simmons's pyrotechnics and whom performing is a kind of mental masturbation. The Sex Shop boy who with his band HIM has just delivered one of the most impressive debut albums of the 90's.
More on HIM to come...
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