HIM: New Audio Interview With VILLE VALO Available

Paolo Bianco, owner of the Italian news blog Musica Metal, recently conducted a phone interview with Ville Valo, vocalist for the Finnish love metallers HIM. The result was a friendly chat touching the most different subjects, starting off with the brand new album "Venus Doom", but also focusing on the importance of having a sense of humor when offering cover versions of NAPALM DEATH, the "Uneasy Listening" remix CDs, and the obvious love for BLACK SABBATH. Most notably, Ville admitted to not liking the "Transformers" action figures when he was a kid, preferring "Star Wars" stuff to them, and he regretted selling all his toys years ago, because now he'd make millions selling them on eBay.

The audio interview can be heard in three parts: Parts 1&2, Part 3.

HIM's new album, "Venus Doom", sold 38,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 12 on The Billboard 200 chart.

Valo recently told the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that the band wanted to make a more minimalist album this time out. Enough time has elapsed from the early '90s when Valo himself was absorbing influences from bands such as CATHEDRAL, PARADISE LOST, ANATHEMA, TYPE O NEGATIVE, MONSTER MAGNET, MY DYING BRIDE and others like them.

"There is no way we could have pulled off that sort of thing at the time when TYPE O NEGATIVE came out with 'Bloody Kisses' [released in 1993]. And you know, by the way, that there's plenty of people today who know nothing about that band, or about the Swedish band CANDLEMASS or PARADISE LOST, even. If we had come out with this sort of material at the same time as them, it would just have come across like a rip-off."

As previously reported, HIM's latest single, a track called "Kiss of Dawn", failed to crack the official British Top 40 chart the week of its release. The song entered the British chart at No. 59, outside the official Top 40 list.

"Kiss of Dawn" is the first HIM single in four years that has not made it to the Top 40 in Britain. So far the "love-metal" band's highest UK entries have been with "Solitary Man", which landed at No. 9 in 2004, and "Wings of a Butterfly", which came in at No. 10 in 2005.

HIM performing "Killing Loneliness" in Clarkston, Michigan during summer of 2007: