HIM Frontman: 'It's Very Important Not To Take Yourself Too Seriously'

April 12, 2013

Meghan Player of Push To Fire recently conducted an interview with vocalist Ville Valo of Finnish love metallers HIM. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On how love and death have inspired HIM's eighth studio album, "Tears On Tape", which is being released at the end of the month:

Valo: "Love, in itself, makes the world go round — and it's the cause of many religious and political debates as well. There's very few topics to sing about anyway. You can sing about drugs, sex, cars, politics and religion — and I think that's about it. I'd rather pick the most interesting ones. Which is love, the death of love, the sense of longing and the losing and regaining — which can be interpreted as being part of death too. I like a bit of drama. I think that if music and lyrics are too close to everyday, it usually becomes boring. I like stuff to be larger than life."

On how much deeper and darker he can go for inspiration for his lyrics:

Valo: "What a question. Is there a limit to the darkness? No, I won't limit my darkness, and thankfully the abyss that I'm looking at isn't very shallow. It's more like a balancing act, more or less. I think it's still important for our band to make music that you can bang your head to or shake your hips to or just have fun — but still try to have a cinematic quality come from that too. It's trying to combine all of the elements from our idols and rock music in general that we've adored since we were kids — trying to put it all together and figure it out. It's important to take what you do seriously and shed a few tears, with sweat and blood while you're doing it — but it's very important not to take yourself too seriously. You can take the work seriously, but not yourself … At the end of the day, we're just five blokes who grew up listening to BLACK SABBATH and that's that. And, we've been tremendously lucky over the years to travel across the world and spread the joyous message of BLACK SABBATH."

On whether his lyrics have ever hit too close to home:

Valo: "Not yet. Lyrically, I very rarely try to be too blunt about anything. For me, [when music is] necessary for my life is actually when I'm lacking the words — like when I have a feeling inside or an existennial problem that I can't put into words. That's usually when I come up with melodies and riffs and ideas for music. For me, it's way more easier to express stuff through music then through lyrics or conversation — it's sonic therapy of sorts. I try not to be too direct or straightforward with the lyrics — I think that's too boring and two-dimensional. A one-trick pony. You have to leave space for the imagination, especially for the imagination of the band. That enables us to play old songs as well. They're not so much tied to a specific area of time when the song was conceived, but can be interpreted by ourselves too in different ways."

Read the entire interview from Push To Fire.

"Tears On Tape" (song) audio stream:

Find more on
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).