Interview With Ville Valo of HIM on The Rock Show with Daniel P. Carter. BBC Radio 1. September 17, 2012

Daniel P Carter -Hello?

Ville Valo - Hello there

D - Hello.

V - How are you doing tonight, sir?

D - I’m good, I apologize.

V - Don’t…

D - I got my timings wrong. I just presumed it was an hour! I was just lazy.

V - No. It’ll always been two hours, but you know, don’t worry about it. It’s all good, I just came back to the studio and eventually get to go back home – it would be pretty cool so uhh, thanks for letting me know.

D - Oh… don’t make me feel bad! Right, so, we should start.

V - Whatever, whenever?

D - Haha! Whatever! I mean, you’ve been waiting an hour so why should we start immediately, you know?

V - Yea, this is true; indeed. We can also wait about for another 15 minutes…

D - we can just chat – catch up.

V - indeed, indeed, indeed.

D - We should talk about some work then. So you have the album coming out, XX – two decades of love metal.

V - it’s coming out late October. I think it’s going to be out on like the 26th.

D - So tell me about the new compilation. What has been the importance on doing this; why the compilation with a new song rather than a new record?

V - Well, to be brutally frank, we were originally signed to BMG which merged with Sony at one point. They gave us a shout and wanted to do this super cheapo compilation – best of thingy. I said ‘No, we can’t have that,’ because we had a compilation that’s called, And Love Said No, and that was back in 2006 (OP: no it wasn’t, ALSN came out 2004) and it did really well and it was well put together and all that stuff, so I wanted rather to have something more not necessarily spectacular but something more special going on. So I said let me get in touch with Warner in America and get tracks from our Sire catalog to actually make a compilation that will uphold our entire career. Then we started talking about recording a new track for it and one of my all-time favorite songs from the mid-nineties called, "Strange World” from Ké.

D - Yea, it makes perfect sense as a cover for you I think.

V - Well, let’s say we’ve been kind of lucky or we have really good taste musical tastes within bands that are rather odd. If I can’t come up with any original material I think we’ll make a really, really, good macabre and grotesque covers band one day. I mean, we’ve done Wicked Game, and we’ve done Solitary Man, and we’ve played back in the day – we used to play Madonna’s Live to Tell 

D - Really?

V - Yes, that was ages ago. You know, we’ve played all sorts of stuff that was influential to us back in the day when we were kids. And now that we’re old, we all kind of feel nostalgic, old and weepy and all that stuff. But then again since we’re working on a new album again as well at this particular moment in time; we thought that having a compilation coming out is a good kind of reminder that here we are; we still do exist. Because it’s been quite a while since we had to take a break because our drummer’s hands went – they weren’t really working that well and he had problems for about 8 months so we just had to wait and I was writing some new songs and stuff like that. It’s more or less like a reminder that we still exist and that we have a catalog and we have a few melancholy ditties that you might fancy.

D - I believe the term is, "Bangers.”

V - … oi?

D - You have a lot of bangers I would say; classics.

V - Oh, well I’m blushing here but it’s kind of odd the title of the compilation; it is actually 20 years since we started with Migé, the bass player of the band, when we came with the idea of forming a band and it’s pretty amazing to look back and at the same time it’s kind of sad.

D - Okay so, Strange World is going to be the official single. Have you shot a video for this as well?

V - We have actually shot some material and we did a little session - no one is supposed to know about this but we did a little live session at Finnvox’s studio where we’re usually recording stuff back in Helsinki. It’s kind of a U2 vibe kind of thing where we play in a circle and some of it’s been shot but some of it is being edited and some of its being mixed. So we’ve recorded nearly 10 songs just to put them out on the web or whatever – I don’t know yet, you know, just to get something out. It’s been such a long time that I think that we prove that we’re still men.

D - We’re still here and we’re still manly.

V - Indeed.

D - How the recording going for the new stuff then?

V - All the drums are tracked. We just started working on guitars today – it sounds good, Linde’s tracked 2 songs.

D - Already?

V - Yea, well, he’s a fast guy. He’s a superb player. Hopefully we’re going to get the whole thing done/mastered, covers and everything by mid-December.

D - Oh awesome. When are you looking at release and who’s this going to be coming out on?

V - Well, that’s the question at this particular moment in time. It’s one of those things when a. we’re not businessmen and b. now we’re concentrating on recording an album. I’m hoping that our sweet manager, Seppo, will take good care of that side.

D - Well, thank you for taking some time out to speak to us.

V - Well... come on, come on, man.

D - Well alright, mate, take care!

V - You be good.

D - No, you be good.

V - [laughs] Okay. Well, you be better!

D - Take care, Mate!

V - Be in touch – be good!

D - Gent! Thanks to Ville for taking some time out. Again, I want to apologize profusely for getting the time zones wrong. It’s not been good on the interview front; it’s been pretty, pretty, pretty bad. With that said, I’ve been pretty excited about the compilation; I’ve been really looking forward to seeing the live video stuff they’ve recorded. Right! We didn’t actually get to ask it in the interview but there’s a long standing tradition of them playing shows at Tavastia at the end of the year in Helsinki. Hopefully - fingers crossed, I’ll be going out for – they’ll be doing 4 shows on the last 4 dates of the year so I’ll probably go out for that. I might do a report from there as well because that’ll be a good time. Plus I’ll get to see HIM 4 nights in a row. My wife would be really happy. So will I but I think more so her.

Transcribed by realitydistortd of HIMfected