VILLE VALO: Sentimental Brutality
An interview by Sarah Fleming.
Since HIM called it quits back in 2017, there has been something missing on the live music landscape. Luckily for fans of the love metal genre that HIM created; Ville Valo has been working fastidiously on a stunning solo project.
Released in January of last year, Neon Noir is a sumptuous album that captures the classic HIM roots, but reinvigorates them with his signature sound and pulsating synths. Like a vampiric kiss to the neck, Neon Noir will soon become an album on permanent rotation in most music lovers’ collections.
Even more exciting than the release of Valo’s debut, is the announcement that he will be coming back to New Zealand after sixteen long years. Accompanied by a live band, Valo promises that the show will be a sweet concoction of both old and new. Yes, he will of course be showcasing his latest offerings, but he also understands the power and longing that nostalgia stirs up in one’s soul; so there will also be a selection of classic HIM tracks performed from their back catalogue.
I caught up with Ville Valo who was at home in Finland, to discuss the album, the tour and the important role that sentimentality can play in one’s life.
Ville Valo: How is Auckland at this time of the year?
Sarah Kidd: It’s actually quite lovely – it’s still summer until oh, about another week until we officially go into autumn so it’s still really warm.
We’ll be there when the autumn has started I guess, yes, around the 10th of March or so…
So yes – you’re coming at a perfect time actually where it’s still beautiful weather but not so hot that you’ll actually melt!
Yeah I’ve got a problem with that you know, I was born and bred here in the ‘Santa Land’ (Finland) so it’s all about snowflakes and whatnot, so yeah, yeah, yeah it’s great. It’s our second time, well my second time there. We were there once with HIM, I remember it very fondly, I do, it was ages ago.
Yes! I was at that show, I’m showing my age a bit [laughs] but I’ve been following your career for many years…
You started young…
[Laughs] So yeah it’s actually coming up sixteen years since you were here, because you were last here back 2008.
Oh man, time flies, doesn’t it? A lot! So yeah, it’s about time to be back there. You know it’s a cool thing after getting the solo album out; it doesn’t feel like a proper tour if we’re not playing Australia and New Zealand you know, because your country, it’s such a faraway country for me. I usually call Finland being behind God’s back, but you’re a close second.
Well, we appreciate it very much because we often get left off a lot of world tours, people sort of hit Australia and then they just go back home.
I understand you know it depends on the sort of like mentality of bands, people are looking at the bottom line a bit more than the experience yeah and different things matter. So, to each their own but it’s always a hassle with countries such as your own with the customs and stuff, flying in with your gear and you know trying to get everything in tip top shape. So, it’s a bit of a pain, it’s similar pain now with Brexit, going to the UK feels so weird after all the time of it being in the European Union so it was sort of like easy and felt like one big country with the dialects share.
Well I must admit when I got the notification that you were coming out, I did I did let out a little squeal because it’s been so long since I’ve seen you perform live. I know several people who are flying up to Auckland just to see the show.
Oh well that’s sweet, that’s sweet. I never got the chance to see your country, we had like a day off the last time around but that was about it, so I feel like a dog you know, like mark my territory not necessarily by pissing, but by widening the territory with each and every step, so maybe it’s gonna be two blocks this time around.
[Laughs]
You released your solo album Neon Noir just over thirteen months ago, it’s a beautiful album that has been embraced by critics and fans alike. There is of course that signature HIM sound to the record however, like you have said yourself in other interviews, it’s like a past, present and future wrapped up together.
You basically said it yourself, but it was the first thing I thought when I listened to it as well, it is like a metamorphosis; was this deliberate or just a natural progression for you as an artist?
It was quite funny because not only me but my mates were saying that since HIM have broken up you know you’ve got a clean slate and you can do whatever you always wanted musically speaking and artistically speaking, and I thought so too. Procrastination is the worst thing an artist can do so like think about what you might be doing [chuckles] speculating on the myriad of options in the realm of creativity and I was thinking about it for months and months on end and didn’t realize that the quickest way to find what you should be doing is to pick up the guitar and that’s something I did and Run Away From The Sun was the first song I wrote.
And I sort of endearingly found myself very close to where I came from, you know it’s very instinctual because I still love melancholy music, I love melodic music, but I usually tend to like my melancholy with a bit of muscle. So it’s the weird balance I’ve always enjoyed, you know I love when sentimentality comes together with brute force as opposed to having the one song that is very sentimental, another one that’s very aggressive. I like it when it happens at the same time because that’s how life and emotions and the realm of the heart is to me.
You know it’s a lot of mixed emotions and a lot of mixed signals and what better way to put all that across the music?
That’s a beautiful way of putting it, I really love that, ‘sentimentality with brutality’. And that is life isn’t it? It’s love, death, everything that we go through there is always that element to it.
It this indeed yeah, yeah. Oh, it’s way too early for me to get this deep! [laughs]
[It is currently 10:30am in Finland as they are twelve hours behind New Zealand and Ville advises me that he usually doesn’t go to bed till around five in the morning]
Now Neon Noir is a solo album in the truest sense; the fact that you actually played all of the featured instruments yourself is both impressive and admirable. Now that the record has been released, it is out there, people are listening to it and giving feedback and so on, are you happy with this decision?
It is a lot to take on and while challenging could also possibly pose certain limitations?
Yeah, but I do think that the endearing qualities come to the fore when they are pushed to the limits and the fact that I’m not a drummer, like a proper drummer even though I used to play drums when I was a kid for many a year; but I think that I come up with ideas that maybe guitar players, or drummers or bass players don’t really come up with because I don’t do it every day from morning until the evening.
And I haven’t really focused on a single instrument for a long time so it’s more about – how I’d like to put it is that I wasn’t playing the instruments, but I was playing the song. And to me, a lot of that’s the problem with musos of course. But like a lot of the albums that I enjoy, stuff by Dinosaur Jr. or The Sisters of Mercy or whatever, they are pretty idiosyncratic and they are so because it’s one person’s vision, like a one track mind type of vision, in all its glory and in all its horrendous as well you know?
All the limitations, I think that those limitations are very important and that also makes the music very vulnerable and to show your vulnerability artistically I think it is a power, as opposed to trying to play it super safe and you know, do it just like the other ones do. You know I have not really thought about it too much but let’s say I didn’t leave anything out because I couldn’t play, so I just worked my ass off until I was able to pull that thing off or simplified it when push came to shove.
So you know I love weird musicians, I love the Neil Young’s and Prince’s of the world, you know people who hear things differently and who play things differently and thus create a new sound and a new world, because there’s no reason really to try to do what other people have done already is there?
Exactly, I am a huge Neil Young fan and funnily enough Dinosaur Jr are here next weekend.
Oh wow, are you going? Because I have never seen them live. Thinking about Finland, I think they have played Finland twice and I have always been on tour, so our paths never crossed when traveling but you know there’s something to look forward to.
Finland’s a similar country [to New Zealand] you know, I think we’ve never had The Smashing Pumpkins play here and no I’m not only talking about 90’s acts, but it’s not a country where … we don’t have a lot of big venues so a lot of the big artists they play Stockholm and they start their tour there, but Finland sort of gets left out. And that has to do with my musical education as well you know in the eighties, I think Iron Maiden are probably the only band that really tour the world, they go everywhere.
They do! And they love coming to New Zealand!
Yeah! And that is one of the first gigs, I think the first gig I saw was Iron Maiden it was 86’ or 87’. I’ve never been to Glastonbury which is supposedly great, but there is one in Denmark called Roskilde, and if you haven’t heard about that festival that’s something you should look into because if for whatever reason you have the chance of traveling up to Europe during summertime here, it’s one of the most eclectic, and big, it has the capacity of 100,000 I think.
It is the only festival I actually went to as a paying customer back in the day before I started playing festivals with HIM. It was in 96’ or 97’ and they had Neil Young, Sex Pistols, Slayer, Rage Against the Machine, Type O Negative, Life of Agony, Ministry, I think Erykah Badu, The Cardigans. There are like eight stages and many acts, so on the same stage you can get something very different. It was like that, you had The Cardigans play first, and then Life of Agony.
At times you know a metal festival or a goth festival, or a rock festival, they can be great, but they can be quite limited in their scope and then if you hear similar sort of racket from the morning until night it sort of easily wears you out a bit.
So, I like those festivals where it’s all kinds of punters and all kinds of musicians and all sorts, coming together.
Yeah, we used to have something similar to that here in New Zealand called the Big Day Out and it would run multiple stages and you would have all sorts of different acts playing, from Foo Fighters, to Peaches, to Beastie Boys and Chemical Brothers. So, there was always something different to go and have a look at.
That sounds amazing, it really does, do you still have any of those big international festivals going now after Covid?
Yes, a couple. We had one a few weeks back called Laneway, which is quite eclectic which is great to see, although they do mix in a few of the mainstream acts like Stormzy etc.
I’ve always wanted to go to Wacken but it’s like metal all day, every day. I love metal, but yeah, I need something to break up my day.
Yeah, but also you get surprised by what you might like, and what you might find, and also what kind of people you might meet. The thing about Wacken, was actually I was really surprised, because it was the first time we played there, we played there last summer. And it’s quite eclectic too, and I think that’s because the horizon of metal has widened.
It’s not as Manowar as it used to be, there is a lot of ladies involved, and a lot of people from all different walks of life, and different sub-genres of metal, well it’s hard rock. But then if I think again in terms of acts like Sleep Token, or Cradle of Filth, there’s a lot of variety and a lot of dynamics in between what they have to offer and never the less, they are sort of under the same umbrella.
I love Cradle of Filth, they have only been here once, and completely sold out the venue they played at.
Of course, they did, they just played Helsinki last Sunday, so I got to see a few tracks, I love that band, I’ve got very, very good memories of Dani and them, hanging out on the tour bus back in the late 90’s. Dusk and Her Embrace when it came out, was a massive, massive influence.
Dani is a wonderful fella, nothing phases him. It’s fantastic that they are still going, a lot of bands don’t last for many, many years doing what they do. Even though the line-up has changed quite a bit, the band are really, really tight at the moment. I don’t even know the other musicians in the band, but it sounded really, really good and they had a great front of house engineer as well, so you could really make out what was happening on stage.
A lot of times with faster metal, it can turn into this big … you know you’re not sure if you are listening to your Mum hoovering or if you are listening to music.
[Laughs] Yes, front of house, people forget how important front of house people and good sound engineers are, they can make or break a show.
Indeed.
Now listening to the album the one word that came to my mind when I was listening to it was sumptuous; I was torn between ‘Saturnine Saturnalia’ where I think your vocals are just divine, or ‘Zener Solitaire’, which I know is an instrumental track, but for me listening to it, it conjured up all these feelings and images in my head and I truly adore that little two and a half minute instrumental.
So, I have to ask, why the inclusion of it on the album as it is the only instrumental you have on there.
Oh that was sort of like my tribute to not only to Black Sabbath but the 80’s, actually a lot of them were Ozzy’s albums; back in the day, especially metal bands, they used to include at least one instrumental that they would use as the intro tape for their tour and include that on the album.
It was like a Mr. Crowley on Blizzard of Ozz, he had that long sort of like semi classical intro and then Sabbath had those choral things going on and it was on Sabotage and then there was something instrumental going on on Master of Reality as well.
But anyway, the cool thing about working on Neon Noir was the fact that I worked on a single song at a time, so I finished one song, got it mixed and then moved on to the next one. So in essence it felt like twelve little albums because I would always start afresh and start anew with the whole recording process and also with starting completely fresh regarding having a song so it was always like, you know I started from silence and let’s say in a couple of months you had the full production and song mixed and because I did it like that it gave me the opportunity of thinking about the flow of the album.
A lot times when you’re recording with the band you don’t get that because you do twelve songs of drums first and then twelve songs of bass first and then it’s too late to start thinking about what you actually have.
But I was able to sort of like creatively bounce off the song I just finished, or the songs I finished early on and I just felt the album needed one of those weird, wonky moments and also they could serve as an intro or for obvious reasons I was thinking that it would be a great intro for the album.
But then again people are so ADD these days that they need something that’s a bit more hard hitting and immediate, so yeah Zener Solitaire, it’s my mixture of Goblin who used to do the soundtracks for Dario Argento, the Italian horror movie master. So I was trying to mix Dario Argento’s Suspiria, that soundtrack with Phil Spectors stuff. I love that sixties, the girl group sound, so that’s like in a haze of having you know 40°C fever that was my goal and I think they achieved it pretty well! [chuckles]
I absolutely love it and speaking of Goblin I was very lucky to actually have seen a screening of Suspiria in a lovely old historical theatre we have here in Auckland called The Civic, with Goblin performing the soundtrack live.
Oh wow! When was it, when did that happen?
That was just over ten years ago now, the Civic has gorgeous architecture and red velour seats etc and it was just the perfect setting for it.
I remember, I think they did a screening if not in Helsinki, then in Stockholm, which we are quite used to flying over or taking a ferry over and seeing bands. But I remember that, I remember that they did a few of those, that would have been a trip!
Now I’m quite a visual creature which you’ve probably already figured out from me raving on about red velour seats, but the cover of your album to me is quite stunning. I mean it can make or break an album, it’s something that you know can make people pick things up and check it out.
I love how it’s just a stark black and white photo of you, but it is also the delicious combination between the masculine and the feminine of the head piece that you are wearing.
How did you come up with the concept?
It was me and my photographer mate [Joonas Brandt], we were getting super desperate in the turmoil that the pandemic was, and I knew that we needed some photos, so he said let’s do something on film.
And then he had the idea of painting the letters ‘V’ in my eyes with an LED light so it’s all film [Kodak Tri-X 400 film] there’s no like, retouching and no photoshopping to that picture and I like the fact that it’s sort of … and once again it gives very mixed signals to the listener I think, in a way that has that sort of fantasy, late 1800s so bohemian French vibe, and it has a bit of that rent boy what the fuck feel to it. And also, I like the expression, I’m not a good actor so it just happened, I like the expression and some people see it as like you know, a deer in the headlights.
So, some people see kinda scared, and some people see kinda daunting and I think it’s good. And also because it’s the first solo album, I thought that it’s the traditional thing to do, to have the artist on the cover so you know whose doing it and the mourning veil in front of my face I just picked that up from my girlfriend’s.
And it just happened, when we saw that picture, when the film was developed we just thought that we need to use it and that’s it; anyway, it does happen on occasion, but it definitely wasn’t premeditated.
I did wonder if it was film as it had that feel to it. I love it, it fits the album perfectly.
I think it’s eye catching and it has that sort of New York 70’s sort of Blondie, Patti Smith vibe, so it sort of covers all my idols as well. Like a visual hats off to a lot of the people who have influenced me along the way. Visuals can be used like that too as well as music.
Well I felt that way too watching the music video for the title track Neon Noir; the intro gave very Peaky Blinders vibes, very Cillian Murphy.
Cillian Murphy is one of my favourite actors. But I think I was wearing the cap before the series…
[Laughs]
I have always been a hat guy, so I was wearing a beanie for a long, long time and I was looking for an alternative and found the cap somewhere. I thought the intro for Neon Noir, the music video, was actually to get the vibe close to the first album cover of Black Sabbath, so like the autumnal.
And I think he [Kim Koponen] has a very Roger Corman vibe, sixties, with Vincent Price, those Edgar Allan Poe films back in the day. Like The Tomb of Ligeia for example, he has a similar sort of colorway and at least that’s what I was looking for or going for. But it doesn’t matter, Peaky Blinders is good too!
Sidestepping a bit, musically what excites you at the moment? I mean obviously you play festivals etc, have there been any acts that have caught your eye recently?
I haven’t really seen too many new bands, the last new thing which isn’t a new thing but was a new thing for me was the Turkish – originally Turkish – goth band called She Past Away. That was last year, I knew of them and then during the pandemic I fell in love with their music and that sort of overly 80’s, drum machine driven, very prototypical goth, in a very good way.
And they were great live too; I saw them a few months ago, oh, it could be more than a year already, but there’s something.
I’m not big on playlists and there’s a lot of sort of like you know, glaring emissions in my musical education, so for example I re-found Brighter Than a Thousand Suns by Killing Joke so I’ve been listening to that quite a bit because I love Jaz, not the musical genre but Mr. Coleman; there’s something very, he’s one of those people that is sort of like a mythical character out of a book or something.
His sense of melody is very different to I think a lot of peoples, he’s got a very similar sort of vibe as Martin Gore from Depeche Mode in a way that you only hear a few bars of the song and you instantly know who wrote it, and that’s quite something I think.
Agreed. I discovered She Past Away about two years ago and have been an avid listener ever since. And of course, we are lucky enough to have Jaz Coleman living here in new Zealand on Great Barrier Island.
Yes, he used to travel quite a bit back in the day, and he has been a very enigmatic character. I had the chance of meeting him in London, many, many years ago at – I can’t remember what it was – but some awards thing. I like to keep my idols on pedestals, I think it is important to have people to look up to you know.
Obviously, music runs through your veins, you’ve been a musical person all your life; however, if music had not been an option for you, if the universe had decreed that it was just not going to happen. What do you think you would have done with your life?
Well, I started music at such an early age, so my mental faculties hadn’t really developed. So, I guess I would have been an Indian.
You would have been a what sorry?
An Indian. When I was growing up in the eighties, you were either a cowboy or an Indian, and I always wanted to be an Indian. But then I fell in love with music, so that’s what I meant about my mental faculties not being quite there yet. So, I really didn’t have a plan B, I really didn’t logically think about it. I started playing music when I was maybe like eight years old, so it’s always been there and it’s always been like a security blanket and a safety blanket between me and the world.
Sort of like a filter to filter out all the evils in the world, it really is a crutch and it is a muse, but it’s always been there, so it’s tough to say. I never studied anything, so maybe I would have been a cabby [taxi driver] like my dad used to be. So that that could be something, but I’m not sure.
I’m still all over the place, you know as a personality I love to do all sorts of little things but usually they have something to do with being creative. So yeah, I would say I would be the last of the Mohicans if I couldn’t be a musician.
Love that movie with Daniel Day Lewis.
Oh yeah, I haven’t seen that in a long time!
I’m an absolute cinephile, that’s my favorite thing to do when I get five minutes to myself is actually just sit down and watch old movies…
Likewise, likewise, but there’s also so much good stuff, new stuff coming out. I stopped buying books because I realized that I won’t have time to read all of them, and that means that you’re coming to an age, back in the day you don’t see an end to any of it, so I was just stacking up stocking up. And you know, now I’m not! I’ve been more responsible with which trees are cut for my reading pleasure.
I do love to read but don’t get a lot of time to do it. I still have a small bookcase full of my favorite books course but like you I am trying to be more conscious of the environment because we are destroying the earth quicker than we think.
But I have to say there is something quite lovely about sitting down with an actual book you know; turning the pages, the smell and feel of the paper…
My favorite place to read is the bathtub and at least back in the day, it wasn’t really an option to use the eReaders, maybe they’re more waterproof these days. But I also don’t like the backlit nature of it and I love the smell of books, I love how they feel in your hands.
My mum is an avid reader as my father is and my mum used to take baths and read, so it brings me closer to the very familiar and familial feeling of the days of yore. So yeah I think that’s the sentimental aspect I have regarding reading books.
And the great thing is, is that you have both options; you have the electronic way of enjoying reading because that really works. The same as with having your Spotify or your Tidal you know, it doesn’t take away from the pleasure of listening to vinyl. Or let’s say on a bad day you really do need a McDonald’s, you know, you need fast and the convenience of feeding your soul. But at times you want that fine dining experience and for it to last a bit longer.
I got into Tidal but whatever reason it’s a bit less sort of like a social media platform, which I’m not too keen on so it feels more like a personal player to me, and they do sound a bit different; I’m not saying that one sounds better. It feels to me that Spotify has a bit more bottom end, sounds a bit more bassy but nevertheless you know the thing I really do love about the fact that you’re able to carry that stuff along with you is the fact that it really eases my fear of flying, so I’m able to just listen to music when flying. I am not necessarily afraid, but I’m an anxious flyer, I just don’t feel comfortable on a plane.
I guess it’s the pressurized air or whatever and as an asthmatic it’s just like, I guess my lizard brain sort of gets into a sort of fight or flight mode.
Hence why we truly appreciate you making the effort to come over here to New Zealand.
[Chuckles] Well it is definitely worth it and it definitely adds to the experience, as I said earlier you know it just starts to feel like a proper world tour when you’re able to travel to faraway places, and that is one of the most faraway places I can think of when it comes to music.
Ville Valo is performing a special one-off show in Auckland, New Zealand this March alongside the Kiwi post-punk act Breaches. There are still tickets available for the Powerstation show on the 13th March, but get in quick as they’re selling quick! Head on over to AAA Ticketing to get yours now!
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