Notesfromthepit.com

Just a quick post to let the reader know about my friend L's website called Notes From The Pit. L and I met in the photo pit of a HIM show in St. Louis and have been friends ever since. She photographs and interviews bands regularly and her latest interview with Aiden can be seen here. Take a look at her website. She's recently covered Chris Cornell, Silverstein and of course Aiden. She's got great links to rock news and of course Metal from Finland- yeah! Enjoy! -K

Helldone 2008

Well, it’s the beginning of January 2009 which means that New Year’s Eve was celebrated all around the world. This Eve I found myself once again in beautiful Helsinki, Finland to attend Helldone, the annual three-night music festival that ends with HIM performing to their hometown at Tavastia at midnight on December 31. I went last year for my first time and for some reason just had to experience the Finnish winter one more time. I’m so glad I did and that I hadn’t burned any contacts with HIM’s people over the year because they provided me with photo access once again and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to try out a new camera. What follows is not exactly the type of book that I wrote last year. To be honest, I spent most nights drunk and happy, meeting locals and even getting caught up on world events while sharing a light with someone in the smoking area. My tripmate Jess and I spent most days sleeping, recovering, and then foraging for food before cleaning up to start another night out. It seemed appropriately “Finnish” in a way and for the first time I felt my age. Sigh. Anyway, let’s get down to why I was there in the first place...
Helldone 2008 marked the tenth anniversary of HIM’s New Year’s Eve show at Tavastia club, the tradition that began the Helldone Festival. This year was the fourth official year of the festival and unlike last year, per the fans’ request, it featured only Finnish bands. It also included 3 additional performances at Nosturi in Helsinki and then in the towns of Oulu and Tampere. The neighboring “chill-out” club next door to Tavastia, Semifinal, featured drummer Jussi69 from The 69 Eyes spinning records.
The lineup included:
HIM
KYPCK
45 Degree Woman
Stam1na
Diablo
Godsplague
The 69 Eyes
Negative
Sara
At Tavastia, I was very interested in seeing Negative, lead by striking blonde lead singer Jonne Aaron, who performed to an adoring crowd, because they are a total throwback to the Sunset Strip glam rock scene from 1986. I wish I knew more about these guys, but I can name one song that I recognized from the setlist: “Won’t Let Go”, off the 4th and latest album “Karma Killer”.
Introduced by Bam Margera and wife Missy, along with a spacy Andy McCoy from Hanoi Rocks, The 69 Eyes did not disappoint. This quintet formed back in the early ‘90s in the clubs of Helsinki and while gothic, are anything but gloomy. Their influences include Guns ‘N Roses, The Misfits, and Sisters of Mercy which made me very excited to get to see them. There’s a whole lotta look going on with this band and they always seem on the precipice of taking themselves a bit seriously, but they were a blast live. In terms of Finnish rock, these guys could be considered titans.
On New Year’s Eve, HIM sounded perfect onstage and changed up their setlist a little bit to include some old favorites like "When Love and Death Embrace" and their cover of "Rebel Yell". There were a lot of classic setlist songs like "Your Sweet 666", "The Sacrament", and "Funeral of Hearts". They didn’t play "Vampire Heart", much to my disappointment. However, Ville looked like he’d had some good rest and even more so than last year seemed to enjoy the performance. The crowd loved every minute of the New Year’s celebration, though Ville did have to dodge being hit by a banana thrown by an audience member at some point. In reaction, Ville simply shook his head and scolded the person in his strangely sedate way. He seemed to speak more Finnish than I remember from last year, though he did take a few minutes to promote his father’s sex shop in the Kallio district in English.
At the Nosturi show, a Finnish woman said to me in a vitriolic tone after I asked what Finland thinks of HIM “I think HIM is an ok band and Ville is sexy, but I don’t understand the fuss. I don’t get how “this band” has suddenly become responsible for putting Finland on the map.” I was extremely entertained by this because her boyfriend held nothing but pride for HIM and what they’ve done for Finland. In fact, he loved them so much that at one point he fell to his knees and sang HIM lyrics to her while she responded with indifference and walked away. In a purely platonic, friendship sort of way I think J and I have had a very similar type of exchange! Happy New Year everybody! UNBELIEVABLE-K

You Might Be...

OK, it's been about 3 years and I'm still checking in with a live journal site dedicated to Ville Valo on a daily basis. It's weird. I've never been so committed to anything in my life. Despite the fact that M and I got in trouble with the site for this post, the ladies at the site and I have corresponded about our travels for this band a few times in the last few years and it's not something I see stopping anytime soon.

Usually, I don't enjoy reading lists like "you know you might be obsessed when…", but when I came across this one on the aforementioned site, by the end I was almost crying from laughter. I pointed some of these out to my friend M, with whom I've shared few wine-soaked HIM nights and he added a couple of subpoints to number 25. The ones we have been laughing at are numbers 25, 52&53, 61,124.

Number 44 is especially poignant to me and M and J know this firsthand. As a fan, it was shocking to see pictures, interviews, and performances become increasingly worse. Thank god he got help is alls I'm sayin. ANYWAY there are so many other things in this list that are wickedly true. Sigh. So, ladies and gentlemen, THE list that made me realize exactly how painfully devoted I am.

You Know You Might Be Obsessed with HIM and Ville Valo When:


1. Tattooing the portraits of dead poets on your body makes perfect sense.
2. You know EXACTLY what DILLIGAF means.
3. In fact, you might even have DILLIGAF somewhere on your skin.
4. November 22nd is an International holiday and should be celebrated by all.
5. If you see anything with a heartagram on it, you either buy it, or resist the urge because your house is already covered in them.
6. Your favorite colors are red, black, and purple. And sometimes hot pink.
7. You know who Daniel Lioneye actually is.
8. Someone says Our Lord and you instantly say, “Oh, you’re a fan of HIM, too?!”
9. You considered purchasing a chicken foot.
10. $50 seems completely reasonable for a Limited Edition CD.
11. Your internet screen name has one or more of the following in it- heartagram, 666, 616, Valo, razorblade, sin, poison, redemption, or any other HIM lyric reference.
12. Getting Ville Valo’s water bottle at a concert is the equivalent of the Holy Grail.
13. And you swear up and down that it has magical healing powers, too.
14. You buy a soundtrack to a movie that you have never seen just because it has a HIM song on it.
15. You say, on a regular basis, kiitos and hei…and you’re NOT Finnish.
16. When sitting next to a campfire, you say “I’m so close to the flame.”
17. You’ve seen Mige‘s naughty bits. And not on purpose.
18. You would practically sell your soul for the GOOD pics of the Bam and Ville Huck photo shoot.
19. And then you would lock yourself in your room for 24 hours or so with said pictures.
20. At some point during the day, you find yourself quoting HIM songs, completely subconsciously.
21. You remember a time when Linde DIDN’T have dreads.
22. You became enraged that a teacher lost her job because of playing a HIM song in her classroom.
23. You have taken duct tape and a black Sharpie and covered a street sign with Dead Lover’s Lane.
24. It’s a religious matter!!!
25. You can’t recall ever seeing Ville kiss a girlfriend in public…but you have all of the pics of him kissing boys in public.
And hence: 25.1 You've discussed with a friend the plausibility it would be for Ville Valo and Gerard Way to hook up
25.2 And quasi-seriously over wine discussed entry points for fan-fic even though fan-fic is denounced while sober
26. Photobucket is your own personal HIM gallery.
27. You call your friends nidiots.
28. You don’t just have a Ville Valo poster…you have a Ville Valo WALL.
29. You know who Sylvester is.
30. Even though you may like Bam, he did NOT invent the heartagram.
31. The Tavastia is your version of Mecca.
32. You’ve given a microphone a blowjob.
33. And it gave you negative feedback.
34. You have made the Love Metal drink.
35. And you liked it.
36. You realize a tower is a PERFECT place to live, and now you want one of your own.
37. You have to have a blood test done and you say to the nurse, “I bleed well.”
38. At one point in your life, you have been in love and lonely.
39. Out of Ville and Linde, you know who has the deeper voice.
40. Your life since 1997 can be separated into the following categories- When Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666 came out, when Razorblade Romance came out, when Deep Shadows & Brilliant Highlights came out……
41. Your personal mantra is “Life is short and love is over in the morning.”
42. You would die tonight for love.
43. You paid $35 for an empty Coke can on eBay…because it was designed by Ville Valo.
44. You started tearing up when you saw the pics of Ville right before he checked himself into rehab.
45. You wear a beanie even in the middle of summer.
46. You’re jealous of Bam Margera.
47. You see someone wearing a HIM t-shirt and find it a turn-on.
48. You know that all men think with their dick’s, but Ville Valo’s dick is different.
49. You had a heartagram cake for one of your birthdays.
50. And you almost couldn’t eat it because it was so damn pretty.
51. Just one look from his eyes, one look and you’re dying, because he’s so beautiful.
52. You didn’t throw panties onstage at the HIM concert. You threw a book of Baudelaire’s poetry.
53. With your phone number on the inside cover. (just in case)
54. You have a drawing of Homer Simpson wearing a HIM shirt.
55. At school, you studied ethics instead of religion.
56. You can recall basically every piece of Ville Valo’s wardrobe. Especially the leather pants.
57. As far as greatness goes, you compare Sleepwalking Past Hope with Stairway to Heaven.
58. Your idea of the PERFECT vacation spot is Finland.
59. You would happily accept an autograph from Ville Valo in sperm or blood.
60. You have crossed oceans of wine to find a HIM concert.
61. You find yourself singing “Like a wirgin, touched for the wery first time…”
62. You’re not addicted to HERoin, you’re addicted to HIMoin.
63. Your dog is named Sami.
64. Love Metal is considered by you to be a very real genre of music. (which it is, thankyouverymuch)
65. It’s been years since you went a single day without listening to at least one HIM song.
66. Your wedding vows consisted of, or will consist of, “In sickness and in health, in joy and sorrow, until love and death embrace.”
67. When the moon is full and shining, you refer to it as Dark Light.
68. During a game of tug-of-war, you yell to your teammates “Please don’t let it go! Because if you won’t let it, I won’t let it go!”
69. The first trick you taught your dog, Sami, was to Play Dead.
70. It’s not peace, love, and harmony. It’s peace, love, and VEGETABLES.
71. Every time you hear the word Venus, you think Doom.
72. You have been jealous of Ville’s cigarettes, because damn it all if you don’t want to be pressed between his lips.
73. You know for a fact that I love you is eight letters….and so is bullshit.
74. While meeting HIM, you blurt out “I’m waiting for you to drown in my love!”
75. Like myself, you took the actual time to write a list like this. XD
76. You have more pictures of Ville Valo and HIM than you do your family.
77. In fact, you have seen HIM in person more than you have some members of your family.
78. You made Ville Valo a birthday cake……and you live 8,000 miles from him.
79. While blowing out the candles for him on said birthday cake, you wished FOR Ville Valo.
80. You suddenly find yourself thinking about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as dinner.
81. Your Mp3 player consists of the following- HIM songs, HIM acoustic songs, cover songs done by HIM, tributes to HIM, collaborations with HIM, HIM bootlegs……and Daniel Lioneye.
82. You bought the book “Finnish for Dummies”.
83. And you drew a heartagram on it.
84. On the list of places to see before you die is a certain sex shop in Helsinki.
85. You took your Rolling Stones t-shirt with the lips and tongue and cut off the sleeves.
86. You think that the footage of Ville Valo flashing the audience his abs should win an Academy Award for “Best Short Film“.
87. A friend gives you hell about smoking, and you calmly say “Smoking kills, but only love will break your heart.”
88. You fear for the best, and hope for the worst.
89. You’re asked where you are going to take a walk, and you reply “The Path.”
90. You wish that razorblades came with heart cut-outs in the middle.
91. You have taken pictures of yourself snarling at the camera.
92. With massive amounts of black eyeliner and lip gloss.
93. And you’re a guy.
94. You truly believe that Ville Valo’s smile is the ACTUAL cause of global warming.
95. You have pet names for Ville’s “pecker”. *COUGH*
96. For Halloween, you went as one of the guys from HIM.
97. And you’re a girl.
98. It’s been raining for weeks, your lover just broke your heart, your kitty just died…..and looking at Ville still makes you smile.
99. You go to karaoke with your friends, and upon singing a HIM song, you grab the mic stand, hop onto the speaker, lean back, bend the mic stand, and fall flat on your ass…..but you still looked wicked cool doing it.
100. Upon walking into a dark house, you think to yourself “I’ve got to light this endless dark.”
101. You know that there are two guys in HIM named Mikko in real life.
102. And you know who they are.
103. You made out for the first time with the person you liked while piss drunk, and then threw up on their bed……and felt quietly proud because now you and Ville had something in common.
104. Your friends now call you (your name) Valo.
105. Instead of OMG, it’s OMV.
106. You know that the beginning of the end isn’t really the end…because then there’s Don’t Fear The Reaper and a hidden track.
107. You want to paint the outside of your bedroom door crimson, so that when you are in your room and it’s closed, you can say you are behind it.
the peace sign, but you do use the live long and prosper sign.
113. And you never watched Star Trek a day in your life.
114. You sent Ville a rubber duck.
115. You know who’s milkshake REALLY brings all the girls to the yard.
116. And some boys, too.
117. Your favorite phrase is “the pot calling the kettle black”.
118. Gorgeous, beautiful, handsome, sexy, and any other adjective in that genre do him no real justice.
119. You get annoyed when someone asks AGAIN what Love Metal is.
120. You know ALL the words to Valo Yossa…..but you have no fucking clue what you’re saying.
121. You bought a bass guitar.
122. And you named it Rambo.
123. You know that the song Razorblade Kiss is actually about fucking.
124. You have poured beer on a hotel room bed for your homies….and then fell off the bed.
125. You understand everything that I have just taken 2 days to write….and you want me to keep going.


And just because I REALLY love me some beanie...
Please go here to see more of this list and to see what the lovely ladies at v_d have for you…-K

Download- Crying on the Inside

My aunt in England called to tell me that the Download festival was happening just down the street from her. Sigh. I love Huntsville, but the lack of live shows I want to see is killing me. I've been reading great reviews of HIM's performance which is wonderful for this fan. Poor substitute, but I found this NME interview on You Tube from Download. About 1:50 is fantastic. -K

Hyvää Uuttavuotta! Unbelievable New Year's at Helldone

When I arrived in Helsinki last week, the city was about to move into its second consecutive New Year's without snow, the Helldone Festival was about to begin its third consecutive year as a full on festival splitting bands between Tavastia and neighboring Semifinal, and I was in the city for the event for the first time. Given photo access and a guest list welcome, I spent three nights at Tavastia checking out the local color, seeing a classic goth band perform, and experiencing a New Year's for the books.

Each night I was there I saw men dressed up not as Bam Margera, as you find in the States, but as Ville Valo himself. There were blazers and beanies and high cheekbones. There was also this guy who looked straight out of DSBH: the build, the hair, the make-up, and tight flared jeans with the ironically patterned man-blouse. There were many at Tavastia paying homage to their living idol all three nights. Mostly, however, there was just a lot of black clothes and hardcore gothic-types (not necessarily HIM fans) who seemed very serious about their "thing". Gorgeous and quiet most of them were, and some I couldn't peel away from.

My first night at Tavastia gave me the opportunity to see some less-known, local bands like The Black League and Swallow the Sun. Formed in 1998 by lead singer Taneli Jarva, The Black League looked and sounded like a traditional southern rock band: visions of Lynyrd Skynyrd and a bit of twang. This band has four albums under their belt and worked their asses off onstage from what I saw. Finnish death/doom metal act Swallow the Sun rocked the hell out of the venue on the first night. I couldn't understand a word lead singer Mikko Kotamäki screamed, but I couldn't care less. He had the audience wrapped around his little finger, and that is always great to watch for an up and coming band. One thing I liked as well, was that although I don't get into the vacuum cleaner vocal styling, the music had a certain melodic quality which makes it a helluvalot more accessible to me. Incidentally, the band's third album, Hope, has guest vocals from Amorphis' Tomi Joutsen and Katatonia's Jonas Renske, so this band has the respect from fellow more successful peers, which is something to always note, in my opinion. Jussi69 was in the bar on this night.

On the second night, I had a taste of Finnish Black Metal with band Ajatarra. Amorphis' former lead singer, Pasi Koskinen, aka Ruoja, now fronts this band. It was quite an experience. I am clearly not the audience for this music. I heard a drunk-looking Brit tell his friend that they should go to Semifinal since this band "sucks". I honestly could not tell if they sucked or not- how sad is that.

One of Katatonia's named influences performed as the headliner on the festival's second night. English 80s goth band Fields of the Nephilim were personally asked by Ville Valo to perform as guest of honor. Much like the New York Dolls, Fields of the Nephilim did not experience mainstream success; rather, they influenced their scene with their dust and death imagery and music. Knowing this, I got a chill when the lights went low and the smoke curled and the death cowboys ominously took the stage. It should be noted that of all the performances I took pics for at Helldone, FotN's was the most heavily populated by photogs. There were so many that we could barely move around each other. On this night I had a brush with Ville Valo, though in a flash he had disappeared backstage. Jesse Valo was also in the crowd, looking chic with a fedora hat and good genes.

On the last night, as I stood in line to check in with the staff, I heard some folks behind me talking about how last year's total line-up was far superior with bands like Cathedral, Anathema, and Amorphis. It just goes to show that you can't please everyone.

Performing on the third night just before HIM was the energetic punk/ rockabilly band The Skreppers. These guys recently headlined the Helsinki Burlesque Festival which seems like a most entertaining event. Anyway, you can check out The Skreppers video for He's My Sister here.

Considering that I had spent some of my afternoon chatting with Kari Valo in his now infamous sex shop Aikuisten Lelukauppa, I got the feeling while watching The Skreppers perform that 12/31/2007 might be a day meant for confession. Besides blushing at the HIM branded multi-stranded hand whip that he showed me and some other fans who had found their way into the store, I assessed the best Finnish porn mags with Mr. Valo to buy for a friend of mine back in the states (seriously). I know, it all seems so inappropriate, doesn't it? More unusual was that I was in a sex shop at 1:00 PM in Helsinki discussing what magazine would be the best representation of Finnish porn with the intention of it being a souvenir. Forget that I was discussing it with the father of Ville Valo.

After The Skreppers left the stage it was time for me to check in with the photog group and wait to be herded into the front of the stage. Around this time I ran into Ville's dad and said hello again. A very charming man, he's more than willing to help you increase your HIM memorabilia collection by selling you all the naughty HIM gear you can't find in Hot Topic! Ville's mother, Anita, was standing next to Kari. She is a petite little thing with gorgeous skin and a stunning smile. Ville featured her on their very first EP '666 Ways to Love', now out of print. I wonder if those two congratulate each other every day for producing such beautiful offspring.

Before midnight, a fellow photographer and I were situated just in front of Ville's microphone and shared a few stories about the event. In a few minutes everyone focused on the owner of Tavastia, who had taken the stage to count down the last few moments of 2007. At midnight, he popped open a bottle of champagne and sprayed every one of us that were close enough to the stage. In this situation, having a little camera helped, because I could hear the collective gasps of the fellow photogs who came in with all their gear that was now quite wet from the champagne! At 12:05 AM on 1/1/2008, the Helsinki hometown heroes that have put Finland on the map appeared before the capacity crowd ready to play to hundreds of fans, friends, and family.

HIM started strong with Passions Killing Floor and moved through a rocking set that included favorites such as Vampire Heart, Poison Girl, and Bleed Well. You can see Ville's champagne drenched setlist here, but highlights for me were Vampire Heart, Funeral of Hearts (which was presented to us by a shirtless Ville. Very nice.), Join Me (which always makes me fondly think of M stripping) and It's All Tears.



Halfway through the set, the four Karhu beers I drank had not yet kicked in, but once they did I called my parents back home screaming into the phone that I was having the time of my life. Oh dear lord. I think there may have been some shits, f*cks, and damns in there, but I can't be sure.

At some point during the show, someone threw their American (I think) passport onstage. Ville picked it up, delivered some witty banter, and then said something like "well, at least now I will know where your tits will grow up." Did I hear that right? Ha! Seriously, who throws their passport? I'm a fan, but I'd much sooner throw Euros onstage than my passport. You need that shit to get home!

Besides gifting us with a shirtless performance for the latter part of the set, the band performed The Sacrament and Razorblade Romance as encores. Yes, we got encores, which is a rare treat with these guys.

A Russian fan emailed me and said that Ville's performance was like night and day from last year's, when he seemed to jeer at the fools who bothered to come. To many who attended this year, he seemed connected, appreciative, charming, and once again to love what he does. He appeared skinny, but healthy, and his voice, as it did during the last US tour, was rich again. He even got playful, replacing "I want you to love me" with "I want you to f*ck me" in Razorblade Romance's Razorblade Kiss.

As I was leaving, I got slammed up next to Kari Valo and so I said hello. Again. I was mortified that he thought I was stalking him.

Helldone was one of the most extraordinary events in my blogger career. I think that it's fair to say that though it was a small event in comparison to other outdoor festivals, it was the most well-organized and easy events I've ever been to, though presence of security was not the obvious reason for it! Indeed, I hardly found any security at all and yet well-known and less-known musicians mingled with the crowd as though we were all equal- wow, that's a notion that is new, isn't it. As a festival, Helldone strips the idea that one artist is better than the other. It seems to be a forum in which live music, not corporate sponsorship, reigns no matter if you are a veteran of goth rock, a band whose following is ever-growing, or a lead singer who can turn a performance into an X-rated affair by just taking his shirt off. It was worth the long journey and the tears I cried on the way home. -K

Check out the rest of the HIM pictures I took on our buzznet page. There are a lot, so enjoy!

Helldone HIM Setlist and Preview

It's been a phenomenal trip to dark and beautiful Helsinki, culminating into the big bang performance last night. I had a good cry fest this morning as I started to organize my suitcase for tomorrow's early flight back home. I cannot believe how much I was able to do in a few days including a hilarious trip to Kari Valo's sex shop.

I had always heard that there were naughty HIM items out there and now I know where you can buy them. When I was handed a HIM whip I immediately handed it back and for whatever reason this came out of my mouth: "I'M FROM ALABAMA!" What has that got to do with the time of day? Anyway, I also learned that if you want to get drunk Finnish men to notice you, you should wear a t-shirt that advertises a local sex shop. Not that I mind; there is something in the water here that makes people gorgeous. Actually, Finland is the only European country I've been to whose tap water can be drunk without being boiled first so there is something different about it for sure.

Standing in the photog pit last night, we got sprayed with champagne at midnight then had Ville tower over us to begin the performance. Can't get better than that (well, actually I guess it could...) He honored us by taking his shirt off towards the end of the set. AND, they actually gave us an encore! There was a lot of booze flowing, lots of love happening, and I met some great people (except for the one drunk Estonian photog who in the same breathe told me America was stupid and that he loved my body JUST as Ville walks by and I miss an opportunity for a great shot).

For those that care, Ville has the goatee again and is looking skinnier than ever. His long, curly locks flared out from under his beanie looking very DSBH last night. It's killing me that I can't show you pics yet, but I brought the wrong damn usb cord! argh. While he was completely covered for the majority of the set, he was shirtless for the last bit which was a nice little present.

Besides Ville's mom, dad, and brother, Jussi69 was definitely at Helldone and I heard that Andy McCoy was hanging out outside for a time last night, but I never saw him come in. Ville's photog friend Ville, who took the official pics last year was hanging around the bar all night.

I will be in touch with pics and reviews asap. -K

Setlist:
Passions Killing Floor
Wicked Game
BABL
Wings of a Butterfly
Kiss of Dawn
Vampire Heart
Poison Girl
Dead Lover's Lane
Join Me
Your Sweet 666
Sleepwalking Past Hope
Right Here in My Arms
Soul on Fire
Killing Loneliness
Bleed Well
It's All Tears
Funeral of Hearts

Encore:
Sacrament
Razorblade Romance

HIM in St. Louis - October 26, 2007

It might have been cold and wet on the streets of St. Louis last Friday night, but no one inside The Pageant would have known it. Fans of Finnish superstars HIM were too filled with anticipation to notice as they waited for their cherished musicians to take the stage. At just past 9:00 PM, the houselights dimmed, the stage filled with smoke and the collective screams filled the venue as one by one the band members took their places and to their instruments, adding layer upon layer of music. The audience did not have to wait long for charismatic frontman Ville Valo to appear and give them exactly what they wanted.

The band delivered a 16 song set that included a mixture of their harder tracks, opening with Passion's Killing Floor from latest release Venus Doom (Sire). Highlights include Dark Light's Vampire Heart with a great breakdown of harmony, a passionate delivery of It's All Tears (Drown in this Love) from their first album (incidentally released 10 years ago this November), the track that made them a hit in Europe back in 2000, Join Me In Death, the ambitious yet impressive Sleepwalking Past Hope, and the finale of beloved track Funeral of Hearts off Love Metal. There was no encore.

Setlist:
Passion's Killing Floor
Wings of a Butterfly
Buried Alive By Love
Wicked Game
The Kiss of Dawn
Vampire Heart
Poison Girl
Dead Lover's Lane
Join Me In Death
It's All Tears (Drown In This Love)
Sleepwalking Past Hope
Killing Loneliness
Soul On Fire
Bleed Well
Right Here In My Arms
Funeral Of Hearts

HIM frontman Ville Valo sported skinny jeans and a Black Sabbath t-shirt under a dapper blazer. The ubiquitous beer of years past was replaced with bottled water and Red Bull, which he swigged throughout the performance. His most beloved prop, the ever-present Marlboro Light, was in hand, but despite this Ville's voice was rich and bold. As usual, Ville commanded his audience with the subtlest of gestures, a characteristic that makes this band best experienced, in my opinion, in close proximity.

Dear reader, if you are a stranger to HIM's style of music you should imagine arctic folklore, heartbreaking melodies, and wicked tales of love and death. Perhaps one can describe it as Lynchian thematics married with ambient melodies. It's five-star music that weaves a tapestry of goth, rock and melancholic-catchy pop. However I describe it here, it's a taste that should continue to catch on in this country. Just open your arms and drown it its love. -K

To see more pictures go to our buzznet site and enter the HIM gallery!

Shelter from the Rain: Judakris' Exclusive Interview with Ville Valo and Mige Paananen from HIM.

Since October 18, 2007, HIM have been on tour supporting their latest release of Venus Doom. It is now October 26 and the band is in St. Louis to perform at the Pageant. On this cold and rainy night, lead singer Ville Valo and bassist Mikko (Mige) Paananen offer Judakris a bit of shelter inside their tourbus for an exclusive interview.
As my friend A and I enter the bus, we are immediately impressed with the amount of Halloween decorations that take up every inch of the place. Ville and Mige stand up to greet us and offer us refreshments: coffee, water, or beer. As we get situated in the lounge area A makes an observation about the amount of yellow crime tape. As it turns out, the tape is real and not exactly a planned acquisition. According to Ville, after their recent performance in Washington D.C. someone got shot about 6 feet away causing their bus to become part of the crime scene. The band was not allowed to leave until the investigation was over. Once it was, they drove away with the tape and decided to put it to good use.
We were allotted ten minutes for the interview, and it seemed a shame to have to get serious. I don't even take my sweater jacket off because I am worried about running out of time. But, when it is all said and done, the interview stretches into just over an hour, 15-20 minutes before the band is scheduled to appear onstage. And, it honestly doesn't feel like an interview as much as it does a casual conversation. Ville is intense but both he and Mige are extremely warm and personable and very good listeners. There is not a hint of bravado during the entire conversation. They take pity on an interviewer who is not just a writer, but a fan as well. Looking back, it all could have gone so terribly wrong. It could have, but it didn't.
I have the latest issue of Blender on me, in which a letter to the editor references Ville's comment on marketing HIM dildos (with realistic casting) and states that she would be most interested in Linde's because "he must be packin!" That's where we begin, but during the course of the interview we hit a number of topics including where Ville stands with writing the next James Bond theme song, the things they miss most about home, lessons learned, and of course, Venus Doom.

But, let's cut to the chase.

K: Will we be seeing HIM dildos?
V: No we're not doing that.
K: I'm actually really glad to hear that!
M: You're not curious?
[Laughter]
K: Me? No!
A: She's only saying she's not curious.
V: [Laughter]
K: I could be, though. But, moving right along. One of the latest rumors on the web was that you had been approached by the producers of the James Bond movies to co-write or to write the next theme song for the Casino Royale sequel. Can you confirm this?
V: It's a very flattering idea. Of course it would be great. We grew up with Bond, but I've never even met those people. It's just a rumor. It's good to do little projects like that rather than the same old same old.

K: Like Synkkien Laulujen Maa? [I murder this pronunciation and am quickly corrected by Ville] I have this cd and it is beautiful. Forgive me for not knowing a lot about Finnish folk music, but is this a good example of that?
V: All the time people are asking, well, wtf is Scandinavian melancholy. To Mige: When I sung that [begins to sing] "kun mina kotoani läksin"... that explains a lot about Finnish folk music. It's not necessarily pathetic, but it's really, really sad. That song is about you leaving your home and the world is treating you really cruelly and you're falling in love and you can't get the girl you want. It's a classic, folklore type of thing. That's the stuff we grew up with as well as Kiss and Black Sabbath. So that's probably where love metal itself came from.
K: On the latest album Venus Doom, the track Song or Suicide, is that in the same vein as what you're talking about with the folksy style? It's acoustic and it reads like a poem. It doesn't have the standard song structure.
V: That was the idea, yeah. It was more like an "intimate". That's because we had a long track (Sleepwalking Past Hope) that precedes it. Like in the 70s they had a lot of that shit happening.
K: Lots of prog.
V: Yeah, well like Led Zeppelin. Or if you listen to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the tracks will be straightforward Black Sabbath, and then all of a sudden the third track is an acoustic intimate that lasts for five minutes. And not a lot of bands do that nowadays. It was nice to play around and not limit ourselves too much.
K: I feel like as we go farther into the future that everything has to be fast and immediate. Easy and fast pop seems to sell a lot and it's a challenge when you put something with more of an album feel, more complex, longer, etc.
V: True, but there's people that like David Lynch and there are people who love reading romantic poetry and there are people who love Stephen King. [laughs] There's nothing wrong with Stephen King.

M: No, absolutely.
V: But actually if you think of the world of literature, I guess that fiction is going in a good direction with stuff like Kite Runner. Literature seems to be becoming more proggy. The romantic novel structure is fucking dead.
M: Yeah, perhaps music goes in phases as well. People get sick of hearing the same thing. They have iPods with one song from every artist. Maybe our album was a reaction to that.
V: But there is a cool thing about iTunes. Just a couple of months back I set up my own account for the first time. It's strange, you know, if I'm all of a sudden, "what was that great song from A-Ha…The Sun Always Shines on T.V. I WISH I could hear it now." And then just you just 'click' and bring it down. I love that. It's great.
K: [Looking at A] We're obsessed with our iPods.
V: It's good.
K: Growing up in the 80s, I feel like it was all about the single. Same with the 50s or 60s.
V: Well, same with the 40s. The iTunes generation is nothing new. The medium is different, but albums started happening in the 60s. You didn't have long players before the 60s. So, this is nothing new. People want the best, which is their right, rather than spending 20 bucks on an album with only one great song. So, that's reasonable I guess. That's the thing that record labels figured out. Take Paul Anka, who got, like, 2 big hits, and they last four minutes altogether and you could put them on the A and B side of the single that costs 3 bucks. Why won't you sell an album that costs 13 bucks that has filler? Because you make more money out of it - obvious reason. Bands like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, they changed the format. So, an album can be a conceptual piece. As musicians, we are fans as well and we keep downloading one-song wonders [correcting himself to say one-hit wonders], it's obvious that that's going to affect the way we start writing our songs. We get bored of that. So that's the reason probably Venus Doom as a whole is more like an album with more of an album flow. Some songs are longer and there is more mood in the songs, more than we've had before. That's our reaction to the iTunes 'thing,' which we still do embrace.

K: Do you have a problem with filesharing? Bootlegging?
V: Well, bootlegging is a different thing. That's always a sign of a great band: the more bootlegs you have the better, obviously.
K: Besides that you once said that when gay rumors start that that was a sign that you had made it.
V: [Taking a drag] Mmm-hmmm. When it comes to the fact that people are downloading albums for free...the making of Venus Doom took me about two years to write. I gotta live off of something. I can't tour and write at the same time. I can't have a normal day job. To Mige: What was the budget for VD? It cost like 250 K to finish the whole album, with mastering, the cover art work, everything. Where the fuck do we get the money to pay for that if we don't get people to buy the album? But then, let's say there's a reggae artist called -----, who I'm a big fan of, but that stuff was never released on cd. I found a site where I could download the album where someone recorded it from vinyl digitally. I was like "yes!" I'm definitely going to buy the album whenever it comes out on cd, definitely. That's my rule. I don't want to piss on my own leg, you know, not on purpose anyway.
K: Ha, although we've all been there. [Laughter]
V: Haha. I guess my point is that especially with young musicians who download a lot of shit for free - what they're doing there is taking money off from the record label that one day might be signing them. But the label is lacking the money so they sign the band who downloaded the stuff for free.
K: It's a vicious cycle.
V: It can be vicious and at the same time challenging. And it's great that there is through Myspace and whatever there's a possibility for bands from little tiny countries such as Finland to be heard internationally. Wherever. Whenever. That's great. I've been downloading documentaries [on this tour]. You know, watching documentaries on Alistair Crowley that were aired on BBC4 back in '92. It's never been released on dvd or anything like that. In that sense you can get a lot of material that was impossible before. Back in the day you had to write letters to people who had copied VHS to get some rare material not available anywhere else. Like bootlegs. To Mige: Like old Bad Brains gigs from fucking Munich from the year '83. Actually, Berlin, '84.

M: It's just another moral dilemma, I suppose. People actually probably don't realize that this is really a moral dilemma. It's just something that everybody does and everybody thinks is ok. [Joking] Later on you find that musicians have been dying of hunger.
K: You think about kids from working class families who don't have the money to spend on albums. They aren't thinking about that for sure.
V: But, I was the same, man. My dad was a taxi driver as a kid and my mother worked for the city of Helsinki. They didn't have shitloads of money. I had to save for a long time just to get my first, like, Kiss album. It was exactly the same thing. What we did back in the day was people would record a couple of tracks for you and if you liked Twisted Sister more than W.A.S.P. I would go into the shop and buy the TS album. They were like demos or promotional tools that allowed you to listen to some of the stuff when you didn't have the money to buy everything.
K: When I was in high school, I can remember listening to that very kind of thing. On one side it was Faster Pussycat and on the other it was Guns N Roses. GNR won. Mige, going back to your comment about musical phases or cycles, there are always bands out there who critics hail as having saved rock n roll. Is that overused?
V: I guess the whole thing means that somebody uses old parts in an innovative way.
K: Like a revival.
V: It's kind of like a reminder of why the whole thing started in the first place. At the end of the day, nowadays it seems like the savior of rock n roll is Iggy Pop and the Stooges. You see him live and you think "oh my god, that's what it's all about." Fucking sweat and blood, etc. It doesn't necessarily have to be a new band doing it.
M: It is just something that brings attention to the start of rock n roll.

V: I don't know who's really big at this moment. Nobody's like, super big that may be new. Something that happened to me musically was to fall in love with a band called Interpol. I didn't know that they are not selling a lot of copies.
K: In middle America, no. But on the coast, especially the east, they are more popular.
V: It's all about media. A lot of media is based on the east and west coast, so that's what we get in Europe. Also, acts like Marilyn Manson, he is or actually he used to be hugely popular. Or an act like Eminem. He makes a big budget video and comes to Hamburg and plays to 2,500 people. It's kind of weird to have an illusion that the media creates. But you think that somebody is bigger than life and they aren't necessarily.
M: It's a hype thing, you know.
K: [My ten minutes have come and gone] Is it time?
V: No, no, we've got plenty of time.
K: [Continues] Recently I finished reading Clapton: The Autobiography and in it he says that fly-fishing is the hobby that takes him away from the chaos. What do you guys do to retreat.
V: For me, I have actually been thinking about things I would like to do. I guess, for example, now I'd like to be back home playing acoustic guitar and writing some new songs. That's always a new step for me. You kind of like find yourself with a character you don't know. All the information you've been collecting into your subconscious comes out. In my case it comes through music and I find new aspects and new ways of looking at things, looking at yourself, and your friends through music. So, I consider being on tour, I'm like a sponge in a way. You see so many cities, meet so many people, uh, watch a lot of movies maybe, read a lot of books and get that information and then when you go back home you kind of decompress. All the information starts flowing around, hopefully the good information through the acoustic guitar. That's kind of like what I'm looking for now so I guess my big hobby is writing music.

K: Mige, what about you?
M: I have been wondering actually.
K: Well, you have a family at home which I'm sure takes up all of your free time anyway!
M: Yeah, I guess hobby would not be a good word for that, though to some people I suppose it would be! I don't have a hobby and it's something that is worrying me.
V: He's a thinker, he thinks a lot. He's like a problem solver. [Likening to life] Like mathematical problems with varying results. There's a lot of things in life where A you don't wanna and don't have to and B you can't solve.
M: But you must underline that you try.
V: You also want to do a lot of things but you don't get the chance. [Like a mom talking about a son] He loves gardening.
M: Yeah, I like gardening.
K: I heard you were a gardener in a past life.
M: Yes. In a sense I'm half the man I used to be.
K: Oh now we're quoting Stone Temple Pilots.
M: Actually, it's not that I miss having a hobby. But I keep hearing that people need hobbies.
V: But everyone does have a hobby in one way.
M: Well, I have millions of ways to spend my time.
K: Hobbies develop naturally.
V: Watching T.V. is a hobby! On tour you never get the time to concentrate on a movie or whatever. You're on tour for months and months. So you go back home to do nothing. Um, fart, cook - for yourself, obviously! haha But, finally just getting to watch a movie. That's one way of decompressing. Mine is for now, I stopped drinking so I'm not hanging in bars so what I'm doing is put my house in order. I'm still unpacking my boxes and I moved there like, a year and a half ago. So, basically my hobby is setting my place up to be the perfect place for me to play my acoustic guitar!
K: Speaking of your house... in the VD cd liner notes
V: Booklet.
K: ...booklet, there is a picture of an owl in a window.
V: That's my window sill.
K: A little menacing isn't it?
V: A little? haha We started recording VD and I had a really bad time, nearly a nervous breakdown, I woke up one morning hearing the voice of an owl. I had never seen a live owl before. Well, in the zoo, but never like this. I woke up hearing it and I said "what the fuck is that? Am I hearing voices now?" because I live in the city and we have, like, four owls. And ornithologists know EXACTLY where THEY are at, you know. That particular owl came back twice after that. I borrowed a digital camera from my producer Tim Palmer and left it on the window sill in case I had the chance to see it. We were still partying one morning at 7 AM and he came back and I shot the picture. And he has never been back. This was strange because he wasn't scared of anything, like people moving in the halls or knocking on the window or anything.
K: Ok, switching gears. What's the hardest thing about touring in America?
V: [Thinks] The carpeting. And, uh, all the pillows are filled with feathers.
K: [Laughs and looks knowingly at A.]
A: You know, I have this thing I travel a lot with my job, and it's like, every time you have to ask for the synthetic kind. Good to see someone else has the same issue!
V: That comes from living in a bus, there's not a lot of carpeting because a lot of us guys we smoke and then we have the air conditioning on all the time. That's basically the only thing that makes it hard for me as a singer. Otherwise it's fine. If I was in the rodeo or a drunkard I wouldn't have to worry about it, but I gotta sing every night so...
K: Gotta focus on the job.
V: Hoh, it's not a job- it's a hobby that became a...
K: A labor of love.
V: Yes, a labor of love!
K: What do you miss the most about home?
V: Solitude.
M: No 'me' time.
V: The road is really social, which is great as well. You get to meet a lot of people and play hopefully to a lot of people. It's just when they're a lot of people in a small container like a bus you never have 'me' time. That's the reason we stay in hotels a lot when we're on tour. Would rather stay in a shitty hotel room for a couple of hours in a day just to have your own room, you know, to center yourself, or whatever you call it. That's what I miss.

K: When you are home, do you have a lot of fans stalking you or hanging outside your window?
V: No. Finland is pretty easy. I don't have a doorbell that works so it's pretty hard to get into my fortress. You gotta have my cell phone number or be a friend to get in.
M: Finnish people are more reserved.
K: Not here so much. Stalking is a full on hobby for some!
V: [The Finns] have a respect for privacy. I've had some situations where fans have come up to the door, but normally I don't open up the door you know. It's my home. It's my own private place.
K: Where you're not on the clock.
V: Yep. So, I've been thinking about building a gate. Just imagine if you've got fans that start knocking on the door at 9:00 AM and I've just come off tour and I've got jetlag... even though their intentions might be the best, but you know, I can't be in the mood all the time. It's hard to put a smile on.
M: It is unacceptable.
V: That's the only place in the world I have my own peace. Surrounded by my books and just talk to my mom and my dad and play the acoustic guitar and read books and watch films and bake. That's what I do there.
K: That sounds almost lovely.
V: I may do that two months out of the year. The rest we're working on something so don't [you] think so. If you think about it, an average Joe works and is home five nights in the week. If the family is cool and the wife is a good cook, you know, it's fine to come home and stay in the same spot and then you have your weekends off and maybe have a holiday once a year where you go somewhere else. But we travel all the fucking time. We don't get to see any of our families. At all. And then there's the time difference. I only get maybe two months or a month and a half. Though, I keep on working when I'm home anyway, so... [being home] there's a lot of shit to sort out anyways.
K: How is it when you get home? Hard to decompress?
M: Well, it takes days. I'm not sure that you ever actually decompress. You can always get the most stuff out, but there's the knowledge that there are already future days booked. Because of that I'm not sure if you're able to totally decompress.
V: It's like a normal job when you take that vacation and you know that in a couple of months you have to go back to it.
K: Yes, we are account managers for a software company and we know the feeling when you take vacation.
V: It's not that different. We get things out of this job that you don't if you're staying in one place or whatever. Sometimes you feel that it would be nice to have a job like that rather than have to travel. For example, I'm single, I don't have a relationship, I don't 'need' to go back. You know, I've got my parents, who I care for, and my little bro- that's basically what I like when going back home. So I don't 'mind' touring and the travel. I travel a lot for promotional stuff, but it's been fine.
M: It's an attitude.
V: It's becoming easier now that I'm not hanging out in bars all the time. You really test the limits of your physicality by getting fucked up every night and touring and acting like a brat for months and months on end. Then it's harder to decompress. Even if you have just two weeks off, when you're actually sober you have a lot more time to yourself. The sleep is better. I've spent the last ten years in bars so it's almost like a new drug to be back home watching films I never had time to watch rather than puking in the toilet or waiting to get drunk again.
K: Did you find that changing your lifestyle made some 'friends' disappear?
V: Uh, nah. I can still hang in bars, I just drink coffee instead of beer. It's also been a luxury...the first time you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you're sober, your brain works and you have a lot more energy. I haven't taken that 'me' time for the past 15 years. I've been very social on and off the road. In that sense, the friends haven't gone anywhere, but I decided to not hang out with a lot of people. I've got a lot of friends who are fucking alcoholics. I don't have any problems with that. It's maybe more me making decisions than people running away from me.
K: Switching gears again. Helldone? Is it still on this year?
V: Yes, tickets go on sale next week. It's going to be three days. New Years is on a Monday, so it will be Saturday, Sunday and Monday. On the first day it's going to be, well, we're trying to sort out good A-class Finnish bands so that people can come and see a bit of what's going on in the hard rock music scene. It will be eight bands on the first night so people can get a good vibe of what we have. On the second day we have an international act there, and then a headliner and then we do New Year's Eve.

K: How long have you been doing this?
V: For about 10 or 11 years. We're trying to expand it a bit. Originally it was just a regular gig and then all of sudden we had a lot of people outside of Finland and then northern parts of Finland traveling to Helsinki just to hang with the band. We thought "let's just expand it" over a couple of nights to make it more worthwhile. A lot of people fly in and it's an interesting way to meet people who are outside of your ordinary realm. For example, South America, America, and Japan, even. It's rediculously interesting to see people hooking up with each other and making friends out of it. So, that was the idea of making it a three-day meeting point, kind of festival thing happening. We're still trying to expand it next year to make it bigger, but we're still looking for the right venues. This year it's going to happen in the same club it's always been in, Tavastia.
K: Will Hanoi Rocks be performing?
V: No. They're friends, but I had heard they will be playing a big gig with Motorhead in December and then they will do something right before Helldone in the same venue. You don't want a band who's played the same club the week before. I think that they've booked the gigs already. And, they may be a bit different from what an average HIM fan would like to see. But they are really good live.
K: Not to diminish their popularity, but Hanoi Rocks is most known for the loss of Razzle in the car crash with Vince Neil.
V: They were highly influential, but never sold a lot of records. They are a big cult band, like New York Dolls. They never sold a lot of records and still haven't, but everyone knows them, knows their story, and have fucking Johnny Thunders on their t-shirt.
K: I know all about the New York Dolls, but I could not name one song of theirs.
V: Sam Yaffa from Hanoi Rocks played bass for The New York Dolls.
M: Ah, there you go!
V: Like The Ramones. People know "Hey Ho, Let's Go" and they know the logo.
K: The seal.
V: Yeah. There are a lot of bands like that that changed the scene and were influential for other bands that actually became big.
K: [Since this is past our time, I say] I feel like I've taken up a lot of your time.
V: We can wrap it up or you can stay. We still have plenty of time.
K: Ok. Favorite venue?
M: There are so many. The one I really like is the amphitheater in Athens, Greece. It looks out over the mountains. The venue is nothing special, but the location is wonderful.
V: There are couple of festivals in Switzerland where the mountains are beautiful. When it comes to venues, in America it's great because you have a lot of old theaters.
K: Or old churches like The Tabernacle where you will be playing in November.
V: Yeah, that's a fun place as well.
K: I saw the Go-Gos there once. [Laughter from everyone]. You know, they had their time. We're kids of 80s. Also, when you have gay friends, it may be some unspoken rule that you have to see them at least once.
Tom, Tour Manager: Hey, they had the beat.
V: [Chuckles]
M: We have a lot of gay friends, too.
V: [Sarcastically] No, no. We don't have a clue about that.
V: But, you don't get cool venues like that in Europe. It's mostly old wherehouses or bars, so they're not visually that exciting. It's not like playing the Wilshire in LA or the State Theater in Detroit or yesterday we played the Congress Theatre in Chicago. Ornamentally and the paintings, it's like being in a movie. Sound-wise they are not always the best, but that's something we don't get in Europe.
K: With your music anyway, the ambience really completes the experience.
V: But we play anywhere.
K: I saw you guys twice on Projekt Revolution. And it was fantastic, but…
V: But it lacks the mood.
K: Yes. I prefer being at a HIM show, where it's you headlining. The music, the fans, the lighting, everything. It's great.
V: And obviously it's more rewarding for us as well.
K: How was PR for you?
V: It was a test of patience. When we started out, we always said to our booking agents that we'd rather play lead in a place that holds 25 rather than support someone somewhere bigger. So, we've never been doing the support thing at all. Which I'm really proud of. For example, in England where the record company didn't do shit for us in the beginning, but we still went there and it was great to see it grow in front of your eyes [over time]. So in that sense it was the first time we did tour and weren't the headliner. Also, playing in the sunlight, which I HATE. [Laughter]. Well, not that I hate the sun, but it lacks the mood, like what you were saying. And, we're not like an emo/punk band that can fit 10-15 songs in 40 minutes. We only had time to play 9 tracks. Obviously, we were able to play to lot of people who never heard us before and in that sense it was really good.
K: American fans will gladly take what they can get since you aren't always on tour over here. You performed a lot of the new material at PR. By now, do you have a favorite song(s) off VD to perform?
V: Sleepwalking Past Hope. It's challenging for us, but it's funny because there are so many instrumental parts that I can smoke fucking 3 cigarettes before the song is over. [Laughter] It's good playing Passion's Killing Floor, Dead Lover's Lane, Bleed Well.
K: I'm fond of Bleed Well.
V: That's going to be our next single. Hopefully the radio will start playing it. We'll see what happens. Now the set is taking shape. We'll start changing the set around later, but not now. Now we're fine tuning the new material live. Also, we're going to be shooting a dvd in LA during our gig. We'll see how it will turn out. It may be good, it may be a really fun night. Or it could really suck and we'll hide it somewhere in our archives. Or we'll just burn it [kidding]. But it's good, so now we're just focusing on fine-tuning the material. Trying to get a balance between the old songs and the new songs. We're trying to get the sense of drama when we're doing the set.
K: Do you ever play In Joy and Sorrow anymore?
M: Actually I was just thinking about that song.
V: Not for a long time.
M: It's a fine song. I really like that song.
V: We're trying to do 16 songs in an hour and a half. That's the max of what we can do. U2 are playing big stadiums where you can have fucking mirrorball lemons that you walk out of...
K: or that you can't walk out of!
V: So, really an hour and a half is good. There are a lot of songs like Gone with the Sin, In Joy and Sorrow, Heartache Every Moment- that's a nice track.
K: Fortress of Tears...
V: Fortress of Tears, Sweet Pandemonium- you know there are a lot of tracks that we can't fit in the set. Now we're trying to do a more 'in your face' set, more than ballady. I like it, we used to have so many slow songs in our set, and it was really moody, it was nice, but it is also nice for us to do something different. It's more challenging. Sleepwalking Past Hope is THE moody piece.
K: Join Me in Death has made a lot of my non-rock fan friends take notice. In 2000, this song made you famous in Europe. It's a wonderful song and timeless.
V: Yeah, I'm proud of the song. Hopefully we can write a song as good as that!
K: Oh come on.
V: No, we were lucky with it. It's funny, back in the day when that came out and all the radios loved it so they played it to death which meant that a lot of people who normally would never know us bought the record. Obviously that affected record sales. So, it's not even about it being a good song we just had a lot of luck. Somebody fell in love with the track and then just played it to death.
K: Your Sweet 666 is considered a seminal HIM song.
V: Oh! Playing the new material, you start to see the old stuff in a different light. We've been doing 3-4 tracks from each album, but we're not playing anything off of Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights.
K: Why is that?
V: It just doesn't blend that well. It was one of the albums that was so over-produced and a lot of people don't know the album that well. We used to play Lose You Tonight, Pretending, and Heartache Every Moment. I love Salt in Our Wounds and I love Please Don't Let it Go. Those were two songs I wrote on the acoustic guitar and they worked a lot better on the acoustic.
K: Last year I started playing the acoustic and chords from DSBH songs were what I used to practice. Definitely acoustic-friendly. What about You Are the One? Was that a b-side, or?
V: That was an extra track for Deep Shadows in the digi-pak edition.
K: Also a great song.
V: It's good, but it could be better. With that album we ended up in a situation where we started out recording demos and they started sounding very Queens of the Stone Age. And we LOVED it. But then things got over-worked. We ended up between tours working on the album and overproduced the whole thing. We should have stopped and rerecorded everything.
M: We had many producers coming in.
V: We had like five people mixing the album and it was just a big hassle. But it was a great learning experience, and it was something we don't want to do again. I love the songs. They just could have been better. It's also what happens, you know, we had a great successful tour supporting Razorblade Romance. A lot of bands, well, I think it happened to me, really, you know, we found out that we were successful and then when you pick up the guitar again you think it will be very easy thing to write a song. So, I could have worked harder on the songs. I love the melodies on the album, though. [Ville retires to the rest room]
M: They're not as refined as well because we ran out of time and we ran out of patience. We had been working on the same things for a long time. We were going all over trying to compete with producers and in the end we really didn't know where we were standing. But there's so much good stuff there.
K: That album stands out to me. To some degree, as a listener, perhaps as a female listener, I don't see the problems you point out, because it's full of haunting melodies and romance. But, I can understand that as the owning artist you have a totally different perspective. But there are so many people who love that album.
M: There are certainly a lot of good ideas on the album.
V: [Returns from the restroom] What?
K: We're still on DSBH.
V: Oh, it's fucked up. That was the time when we kicked out the keyboardist and we were touring and we got Burton and at the same time the expectations were really high obviously for the record company to have another "hit" album. We had to have a lot of bullshit meetings about what to do and what not to do and obviously we did what we wanted to do, but that's all the hassle you can come flying to your own work. If you've been working on one song for a fucking year you always get more and more ideas to rework and rework. To Mige: We should have just stopped, had a break, and then went into the studio and rerecorded everything. Anyway, it's a bit more wimpy to a certain extent, a bit more emotional. The vibe is more mellow.
K: Probably why I as a woman love that album! [Laughter]
V: It's a moody album and it doesn't demand too much concentration to get into the mood. You know, I'm really proud of it- just should have been more moody, more acoustic, and more melancholy. After that we did Love Metal, which was faster, then Dark Light was a bit mellow, and they all kind of reflect upon each other to have us do something different the next time around. Greatest Lovesongs, Love Metal, and Venus Doom are from one band, while Razorblade Romance, Deep Shadows and Dark Light are from another. There are two sides: one more feminine and the other more masculine.
K: The yin/yang thing.
V: Right.

And with that it is time for the band to prepare for their show. A and I thank the boys for their time, take a couple of pics, and exit the bus. Tom leaves me with this: "K, don't lose the braces!"

We head into the venue with our little photopasses, rush up to the front, and take some live shots. A review of the show with pictures will follow soon. -K

Thanks to Gabrielle, Tom, Mige, and Ville for making this happen. To see more photos of the interview, go to our buzznet site and enter the HIM gallery.

Venus Doom

Today marked the US release of HIM's new album, Venus Doom. Ville Valo prepped us for a heavier, doomier album and he wasn't kidding. Swollen guitar riffs, a diminished keyboard presence, and overbearingly emotional lyrics indeed make this the heaviest and darkest HIM album to date.

When I first gave the cd a listen I was shocked. Resolution and hope are acutely absent in these lyrics. Indeed, on this album the light has been temporarily turned off at the end of the tunnel. As perhaps a subconsious dismissal of bands who intend on saving your life, Ville just refuses to take on the responsibility. On this album, misery is what it is. The emotional quagmire notwithstanding, the music itself is what every HIM fan has been waiting for (or, at least what I've been waiting for): haunting melodies, gorgeous key changes, and at the center, the hypnotic vocals that are thankfully not muffled by overproduction as they were on Dark Light. I predict that with this album there will be a drawdown of the teenage fanbase and an increase in adult listeners. I just don't see the content and style speaking to the former demographic.

The album begins with the strike of a match and an inhalation. Of course it does. Ha! After listening to the album a few times today, I have to agree with a Kerrang! review in which the writer states that this album is the result of the band getting great at what they do. So a complete departure it isn't, but why change a formula when you know it works? Hell, it's worked for the Foo Fighters all these years.

Here are some highlights, in my opinion...

"Love in Cold Blood" opens with the lyrics "Serpentine love's thighs wrap around me in search for death…" Quite a metaphor. There is something Queen-like in the chorus, though I can't put my finger on it. It totally works for me.
"Passion's Killing Floor" KILLS live. I just love the lyric "In my arms you won't sleep safely…." Let's not analyze.
"Kiss of Dawn" is a favorite on the album. I think that there is nothing safe about the lyrics in that it is steeped in melancholia, but the structure and the haunting melody makes it hit-worthy.
An epic, 10 minute-long song called "Sleepwalking Past Hope" opens with a beautiful piano introduction that very soon explodes into a meandering choral and instrumental melody that is very identifiably HIM. Another favorite. A little proggy at times, but really not too much.
"Dead Lovers' Lane" is a pop/classic rock gem that is a throwback to the Love Metal era. This song also kills live.
Standout "Song or Suicide" is a short, intimate, raw acoustic recording of a poem set to music. It's so raw that you hear Ville shift in his chair. It's a nice turning point in the album.
"Bleed Well" is a fantastic hair metal song. You know, it's sort of metal, but then chicks can dance to it. Oh, and this also kills live. A throwback to Razorblade Romance.
"Cyanide Sun" is quintessential HIM. It's all melody drowning in a minor key. It's definitely a favorite, though this lyric is so dramatic it made me chuckle a little the first time I heard it: "We've sailed the seas of grief on a raft built with our tears."

While I was kind of concerned that the heavy lyrics would be too much, I love it. I give it an UNEXPECTED. -K

Projekt Revolution, Pt. 2, Tinley Park, IL

When we got to Tinley Park it was sunny and hotter. The main stage was not yet open, but that gave us a chance to hear and watch some of the bands at the Revolution stage. We sat on a grassy knoll that was inhabited by all the other adults looking for any patch of shade next to the stage.





Once the main stage opened up we looked for our seats and then walked up the hill to watch Julien-K perform. The lead singer was at a wedding, so Chester Bennington performed in his place. We got some sun while waiting for 6:00 to hit. Once it did, we headed down to our seats to catch HIM's performance for the second time in 24 hours.

The setlist was the same, so I could sit back, enjoy the show and take a hundred pictures.



I kept thinking to myself, "why am I so obsessed with taking a thousand pictures of this band?" Seriously, you take one, you've taken them all. I guess I was feeling kind of "ME! This is MY moment! I'm going to take a hundred pictures that I won't be able to distinguish later when I download them and post them online!" These photos are so slightly distinguishable from each other, that if I were to be able to flip through them quickly it would be like watching the silent film version of a HIM show.

Here are a handful of those pictures.

Ville looking to his right and smiling- bless him

Ville adjusting the microphone stand

Ville's still not happy with the stand

Ville shifting to the right

Ville smoking and singing

Ville putting a little oomph into it

Ville taking a sip of water

At some point I looked around and saw that I was the only one mouthing the words. Who gives a shit. This was a moment, damn it!

Random Tinley happenings:
I feel as though I saw Madina Lake's Matthew Leone everywhere at Tinley. He drove by us driving a golf cart, walking around saying hello, and may have served me my $6.00 lemonade for all I know.

Speaking of which, C and I were so admiring our lemonade at one point that we did not notice two members of Linkin Park walking next to us. It wasn't until people screamed towards us that we figured out what just happened. Good thing we were alert, eh?

We watched Placebo walk to the stage in between civilians and though they smiled and were congenial, none of the teenage girls noticed at all, poor boys. C and I should have screamed their names just for the helluvit.

Saosin's Justin Shekowski walking around wearing a conical Vietnamese hat.

The acrobatic bassist from Mindless Self Indulgence stood about ten feet away from us. Jimmy Urine from the same band was quickly surrounded by fans at Tinley. I caught some of their set and was impressed with their swagger on stage. The music had a lot of these 80s video game bleeps.

The jumbotrons displayed text messages from concertgoers. Messages like "Cardinals!" would result in boos, "Cubs!" would results in screams. Then there were messages that read "Bam is in the house!" and "Marry me Bam." C and I figured Bam was indeed in the house after the fifth tm came up on the screen. Very cool.

I saw Gerard Way on his cell phone walking by the buses cutting quite the figure in his usual black attire.

The MCR performance was even better up close. The setlist didn't change at Tinley, so I'll just add some of the pics I took. (edit: I need to apologize because I stupidly resized these pics before linking them. I'll upload them in their normal size soon.)
Chicagoan Bob Bryar on a rotating drumkit

Explosive

Bombastic

Gerard in the center, striking a classic pose

More of the show

More shirtless boys… This guy looks like he is not sure if what he's doing could be considered gay.

One of the highlights was in the end of "Mama" when the music turns to a waltz beat. C and I grabbed onto each other and swayed back and forth singing our hearts out. When "Cancer" ended and the lights dimmed, I looked over at C who was wiping tears from her eyes. The trip was coming to a close and we both just stood staring at the stage wishing for more.

We stayed the night with a mutual friend of J's and mine, M. She had wine and food waiting for us and we were able to wind down in the quiet and the comfort of the Chicago suburbs. M was wonderful to see again and she and C got along like old friends. When we collapsed into sleep, I felt extremely lucky that the weekend had gone by with no issue. We hadn't been late, my car wasn't broken into (like it has happened before at a Go-Go's concert in Atlanta), and C and I had our very first road trip under our belts. Though I had no personal encounters with my beautiful creatures, I had least didn't have the inevitable fear that I had made an ass of myself.

When we left, C said to me that she wanted to keep going to concerts with me. I had been worried the whole time that as type-a as I was when it came to this trip that she would be more stressed out and/or bored rather than happy to be there with me. I guess I shouldn't have worried. That night she IM'ed me and wanted me to download the HIM and MCR songs setlists. She's even going to get us tickets to the St. Louis HIM show in October. Hey, maybe it will be cancelled, but at least for now it's something to look forward to. UNBELIEVABLE UNBELIEVABLE UNBELIEVABLE-K