Ville Valo - HIM - Interview - 2006

HIM are known to millions of dark souls around the globe as the creators of their signature love metal sound - the ultimate gothic rock band. From their melancholy music and dark appearance to the religious iconography of their artwork and the ecumenical metaphors of their lyrics, HIM is synonymous with the dark heart of man (and woman).

Audible in songs like ‘The Face Of God’, ‘Your Sweet 666’, ‘The Sacrament’ ‘Beyond Redemption’ and ‘Resurrection’ is HIM’s irrefutably religious influence:

Exploring ideas such as forgiveness, sacrifice and heaven & hell riddle the band’s prolific output.

As an artist, a scholar and a gentlemen, HIM’s shadowy prince, lyricist and enigmatic frontman, Ville Valo is well versed in the dark arts, and Metal Hammer spoke to him to see how the Devil’s influence has infiltrated both HIM and the legions of heavy metal bands that have dared to speak ‘his’ name since the 60s.

When were you first aware of the dark side?

When I discovered Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath. I actually discovered Ozzy before Black Sabbath. I loved Ozzy’s solo material in the mid-eighties: ‘Bark At The Moon’, ‘Diary Of A Madman’ and ‘Speak Of The Devil’

When did you first get into Black Sabbath?

I got into Black Sabbath in the early nineties, about the time when ‘Bad Motor Finger’ by Soundgarden came out. The first Sabbath tracks I heard were actually on Ozzy’s 1982 live album ‘Speak Of The Devil’ – ‘Iron Man’, ‘N.I.B’ and ‘Paranoid’ were all on there.

My parents were listening to the Rolling Stones, but not things like Led Zeppelin, or Black Sabbath so discovering them changed my life completely. The moment I got into them it made us instantly form the whole band.

Why were you drawn to them so much?

Ozzy and Sabbath were inspired by old horror movies, and I was already a big slasher/gore movie fan – I must have had over 100 video tapes.

I’m not religious; I was always attracted to the dark and satanic side of the music simply because I love being scared.

I’m very sensitive, so I still jump off the couch when something scary happens. When I saw the Japanese movie The Ring for the first time, I was scared shitless.

Later on I met a few people who took it all a bit more seriously, and through that I started thinking about it a bit more deeply.

What other exposure to the devil did you have growing up?

Finland is quite a new country. It’s quite a pagan country, Christianity hasn’t been here that long. I haven’t been baptised or christened, and I didn’t have religious studies in school. I started reading the bible and religious writings when I was in my teens - the horror elements in the bible always fascinated me. Everyone wants to know if there is something more to life than nine to five – especially at that age.

I’ve always loved all the Catholic imagery, the art and the beautiful churches, but I don’t believe in Catholicism. I disagree with what it stands for – paying tax so that you can get into heaven, that’s just wrong.

Also I was always a fan of melancholy music which got me into reading [19th century French poet] Charles Baudelaire and getting inspiration from [17th century British poet] John Milton’s Dante’s Inferno - all the layers of hell and the imagery of them are fascinating

So your interest in the dark arts wasn’t a rebellion against religion in your life?

No. I didn’t have to because my dad isn’t baptised and doesn’t believe in god, and my mother is super spiritual: she likes travelling to Glastonbury and Stonehenge.

It’s different for a lot of American rockers who grow up in religious families and want to rebel against it.

So what dark influences particularly inspire HIM’s lyrics?

I would say a lot of that influence comes from Sabbath – because I’m such a big fan. There’s just something in their lyrics that makes my heart beat faster; in a way that no other music ever did before or since.

We also have a very dry black humour, like Type O Negative and Cradle Of Filth. I love the devilish smirk behind it all.

I try to read as much as I can, and I hate happy stories, I hate comedy.

Everyone has their own way of escaping the cruel world, even for just a second. For me, horror movies and writing music are like a ticket away from everything. If I was to write ‘Shiny Happy People’ type pop music, I would probably be a miserable bastard.

How much of HIM’s dark and diabolical songs have a root in reality?

Everything is 100% real, but you tend to exaggerate. I like exaggeration. I don’t believe in miracles, and because every day life is pretty dull you have to veil mundane experiences in something more miraculous.

How does falling in love effect being able to tap into a dark side?

I think love is like yin and yang. It’s somewhere between sanity and insanity; which in itself is very dark. You will always have doubts. I don’t believe that you can be happy with one person for the rest of your life. Everyone goes through shit, and going through a shit time with someone else can often exaggerate it. So in that sense I consider love to be the devil, because for me it controls you completely, and you can’t do anything about. The harder you try the quicker you drown deeper into the quicksand. Love is the devil.

Success often means that dark inspiration evaporates, because the misery and the pain aren’t there any more. How do you keep tapping into that dark side?

I’m happy to be in a position where I get to carry a lot of shit on my shoulders - it doesn’t get any easier. What fascinates me about relationships and matters of the heart is that no amount of money, no fancy hotel rooms can change love. You are in the same deep shit as everyone else when it comes to relationships. And I think that’s where all the dark matter comes from from.

How has the devil’s influence on HIM’s music changed as you’ve got older?

In the beginning it was more direct: more obvious references, more clear images. Recently I met Alan Robson, who does the [Scariest Places On Earth] haunted house TV show, and he told me about some haunted castles and haunted hotels around England. I want to write the next album in a haunted castle. I’ve never seen a ghost, I’ve never felt the presence of anything weird, and I’d love to get spooked. There is something spooky about the English countryside that interests me more than Finland. I want to get away from the home country and be all alone in the dark in the middle of the night with an acoustic guitar… and just play. I want something to scare me, like when you wake up in the morning and play the demos back everything’s vanished from the tapes. I want proof that there’s something else out there.

When did heavy metal become synonymous with the devil and evil?

Black Sabbath’s ‘Black Sabbath’ was the start.

When they changed their name from Earth to Black Sabbath, they decided to make scary music, so they wrote their title track, ‘Black Sabbath’. The name comes from an old horror movie, which they were all big fans of, which in turn comes from an interest in the occult. From day one they utilised man’s basic fear of the dark to make scary music.

They had a coven of witches travelling around where they played, so Tony Iommi and the guys all had crosses made to protect themselves from a curse that one had put on them.

How about after that?

I think the full-blown Satanic thing happened when Venom recorded ‘Black Metal’ in 1982. But – like Sabbath - their Satanic lyrics and imagery was in an effort to make scary music not evil music. The Misfits and Danzig followed in that tradition. Then the Norwegian scene started to happen, in the late ‘80s with bands like Mayhem. That got out of hand, people started taking it all too literally, and people got killed because of it. They did it in the name of Satanism but it was just sick people and stupid people.

What happens to heavy metal when those devilish elements aren’t there?

The good results are bands like Bad Brains. You don’t need the devil to get the adrenaline going and rock your socks off. You can still tap into the animalistic side of human nature, like African drumming where all music comes from.

Think about the fertility rituals in Africa, people all dancing naked; the shamanic trance–inducing rites; and even some really hard-hitting techno isn’t that far away in its effects.

The only thing that heavy metal has that other genres don’t, is the dark poetry of people like Shelley and Baudelaire. Just as much of heavy metal’s imagery is based on those dark and gothic themes, so they were being inspired by the stories and themes in The Bible. That’s what makes heavy metal heavy metal.

But doesn’t it feel wrong to have heavy metal without the devil?

I know what you’re saying but it’s good that there are still people trying to push boundaries. If he’s always in there, why not try it without him. The other question is whether you still want to buy the albums or not. Does it still give you something? The best films and the best music give you a sense of something unreal. I guess that’s why the devil and hell - being within the realm of the unknown - are so fascinating.

Are there any heavy metal bands that use dark and diabolical rhetoric but don’t practise what they preach?

99% of them. A lot of black metal bands talk about worshipping the devil and doing evil deeds without following through. The best music is intelligent and passionate at the same time. That’s why I love Cradle Of Filth.

I believe that the more educated you are the better. You should form your own ideas of life and not follow anyone else’s way blindly. But a lot of people do, especially in religion. Not that I have anything against religion or Satanism.

Have any religious groups ever attacked you for your satanic lyrics

When we started we were called His Infernal Majesty, and had an EP called ‘666 Ways to Love’. I knew the head guys from the Church of Satan in Finland and they said they didn’t want anything to do with us because we didn’t represent their beliefs. At the same time Jehovah’s Witnesses and normal Christians started fighting against us, so we’ve always been somewhere in between.

Have you ever come into contact with Satanists?

I’ve met people who claim that they are Satanists, who are just sick in their minds. The most stupid thing I’ve ever heard was from a guy in a Finnish black metal band. I was asking him what he considered to be true evil, and he said ‘the moment when I strangled my old pet cat, and looked into her eyes’. That is evil, but it’s not intelligent. I don’t want to go that far, that’s just stupid - too twisted for my morals to handle.

Satanism should be about questioning society every second that you breathe in and breathe out. I’m not interested in goats or sacrificing babies in the middle of the night. Yet. [laughs]

Why do you think so many different types of people globally are drawn to heavy metal and its darkness?

In poor countries, especially in South America, it’s often society that makes you want to fight the system and be somewhere else. At the end of the day everyone has to ask themselves, ‘Who is cooler, Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader?’ And remember, they both come from the same place. In the way that Lucifer was a fallen angel banished from heaven in Dante’s Inferno.

I think people’s fascination with the devil and dark things comes from asking the question: who is more interesting, Judas or Jesus? I think Judas is a lot more important.

And Cane and Able. What makes a man able to kill his brother? That’s always been a central interest in heavy metal: what makes people capable of doing evil things? It’s one of those things that people don’t know shit about.

How much of heavy metal’s affinity with the devil comes from blues guitarist Robert Johnson and the legend of him standing at  the crossroads selling his soul to the devil in exchange for success?

A certain amount, but there is other devil music that predates that myth. Haitian music can be evil; the voodoo drumming and the conjuring of demons. Everything pagan can be pretty evil – especially when under fire from Christianity as it often was through history.

Robert Johnson’s story only became a legend tens of years after, when people started listening to [the posthumous album] ‘Hellhound On My Trail’, and finding something other worldly in it.

How much of what is seen as the devil at work in rock and heavy metal is to do with its ability to uninhibit the female sex drive? 

A lot. It’s very important to all things dark that you are led more by your sexuality than your spirituality. Think about how evil people thought Elvis the pelvis was. But that’s not exclusive to heavy metal, or even to rock n’ roll. Niccolò Paganini was such a violin virtuoso in the 1800’s that he made the ladies rapturous. He was considered to be one of the devil’s servants.

People like Bramstoker showed that there was beauty in darkness – and that had a real underlying sexual power: Vampires, and werewolves, it’s all about transformation and accepting the animal within. Music’s synonymousness with the devil and sex has always been around.

What is the devil’s interval?

The tritone is called the devil’s interval. It’s a diminished fifth or an augmented fourth chord and it was banned for a long time [in the Baroque period]. You can hear it in Black Sabbath’s ‘Black Sabbath’ [the third chord in the opening section].

Why have so many heavy metal artists - like Ozzy with his song ‘Mr Crowley’ – been inspired by the infamous occultist and writer, Aleister Crowley.

His being an outsider and his challenging of what societal norms is definitely why heavy metal found an affinity with Crowley. He was one of the first rock n’ rollers. Newspaper headlines in the early 1900s said that he was ‘the wickedest man on earth’, partly because he was living outside of society’s rules.

He was very religious, but religious in his own way. He was trying to find this ‘other’ place, a spiritual balance through painting and writing. He said that when you’re fighting for a spiritual balance you are no longer thinking about good or evil; that life, like people, is not black and white. Good people are able to do bad things and bad people are able to do good things.

All the ritualistic aspects of Crowley are really far out. I’m not a great believer but that doesn’t mean I can’t read his work.

What did heavy metal draw from Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible and The Church Of Satan that he created?

Anton LaVey’s version of Satanism, focuses on the animalistic side of man. And I think that’s what rock n’ roll is. If you take the Church Of Satan’s view of Satanism, then every rock n’ roll band should be part of it. All bands have that animalistic and sexual side, which predates Christianity.

The Church of Satan isn’t my cup of tea at all. Good old fashioned movies like The Exorcist and The Omen are far more scary.

Despite La Vey’s overt diabolical credentials, were Aleister Crowley and J.R Tolkien more influential on heavy metal because of their fantastic output, LaVey’s being more based in reality?

Yes, that’s why I consider Anton LaVey boring in his writing. Most of his writing is very basic, like kiddy psychology.

LaVey was a great showman and a great businessman but he took away a lot of the mystique. I think there are devils and angels all around us. I’ve met people that I consider evil, who don’t give a shit about anyone besides themselves. I think those things are real. Crowley is far more interesting a character?

Why is Crowley so much more interesting?

In the similar way that Tolkien inspired bands like Burzum and Led Zeppelin with ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Crowley offered alternative realities. He found a surreal other worldly aspect to life, an aspect that tried to make life a bit more tolerable.

The fantasy element draws a lot of peoples’ attention. With fantastical lyrics you can live your own journeys into the realm of darkness. Rather than just read LaVey, and think that to be a Satanist you shouldn’t turn the other cheek you’re evil.

Anyone who follows LaVey and the Church Of Satan is no better than your average Christian, because they are still just following what someone else has said. I don’t want to be part of anything like that. You have to question everything whether it be Buddhism, Hinduism or paganism.

Where does Paganism fit into the evil of heavy metal?

After the initial satanic black metal thing [in the late ‘80s], a lot of bands denounced Satanism, Anton Le Vey and the Church Of Satan and started preaching about the old Norse gods. Christianity raped a lot of culture from a lot of people: building churches on holy pagan places, demonising and stealing pagan gods. A lot of satanic rituals were used to persuade people to join religion in the middle ages. And that’s what fuelled a lot of the antichristian and pagan revivalism in black metal. 

There is also a richness of culture in the old pagan beliefs; just look at the Incans, the Aztecs and the Mayans, even the Babylonians and Mesopotamians. Man has the tendency to want to serve a master, and that’s intriguing.

Do you serve a master?

With tongue in cheek I would say that we are the servants of Sabbath. Music is my god: I believe in it. It’s the only medium that gives me cathartic, washes my spirit clean of all the bullshit in the world right now.

Ville, have you sold your soul to the devil?

I shouldn’t be talking about this: it’s confidential [laughs]. I sold my soul to rock ‘n roll when I was about seven years old. But I haven’t been to the crossroads and made an official deal with the devil or anything.