ShockHound

Interview by Tom Lanham

Ville Valo would love to meticulously parse Screamworks: Love In Theory And Practice, the latest grim (but sugar-hooked) concept album from goth-tinged Finnish rock gods HIM. But he’d prefer to address a more urgent matter first.
      “Where are all the good horror films nowadays?” the frontman growls. “Remember back in the day, when you saw Evil Dead for the first time? Everything was so unexpected, you were like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ It was so unbelievably wrong that it was extremely right, and very few films have done that lately.”
     The singer has, in effect, scripted his own personal frightfest via Screamworks, in the form of creepy anthems like “Heartkiller,” “Dying Song,” “Acoustic Funeral” and “Scared To Death.” The songs examine love from every possible angle…before clubbing it on the head like a helpless baby harp seal.
     The formerly hard-partying Valo recently embraced sobriety at age 33, which could account for his burning desire for a new gore fix. But the eternally hungry culture-vulture tells ShockHound that he believes he’s found proper cinematic stimulation overseas.
     “When you see an American horror movie, you usually know what’s gonna happen, more or less,” he explains. “But it’s the French who are doing it right — when you see a scary French film, you never know what to expect. Like that mesmerizing beginning of Martyrs, up until they find that girl with the weird mask on. The French just have this weird thing going, and it’s like a kick in the butt for the whole genre of horror movies, I think. And that primal sense of fear and shock — of actually being disturbed by a movie — I find very welcome.”
   
SHOCKHOUND: Speaking of creepy French filmmakers, what about that totally twisted team of Gaspar Noé, who did Irréversible, and his wife Lucile Hadzihalilovic, who did Innocence?

VILLE VALO: I know! And I wonder what their kids are gonna do? And what did you think of the Swedish one, Let The Right One In? The setting was what made it really special for me, because I grew up in a suburb very similar to that one, at a very similar time, with people wearing those early-‘80s clothes, all wintry and cold with dark high-rise buildings. That was exactly where I grew up, so that made it really hypnotic for me — it was like watching my childhood.

SHOCKHOUND: Since you reign supreme on the Gothic scene, chances are you’ve met quite a few teenage vampires by now.

VALO: Uhhh, I’m not sure whether they’d be real ones. But that’s fine by me. My nicotine-soaked blood would kill them in a second. And funnily enough, vampires are like rock n’ roll — they die every ten years and just get resurrected again later, just when vampires and rock n’ roll are not trendy anymore. Remember how the whole world was into vampires when Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula came out, along with Interview With The Vampire? Then there were a dozen spinoffs that were shit, and then there was a big, big gap in between. And all of a sudden, Twilight made all the difference, and now there are a gazillion vampire things coming out. So I don’t know what’s gonna be next. Werewolves, right? Frankenstein will be a play soon. The only missing Universal monster is the Creature from the Black Lagoon! Maybe he’ll get a cameo in some upcoming collaboration.

SHOCKHOUND: You’re a voracious reader, too. What books have you been devouring lately?

VALO: The problem is that there are way too many books to read. And it’s kind of a beautiful problem to have. When I’m working on an album, my attention span is a little short, and I can’t really concentrate on reading. But when a tour starts with the band and I’m spending a lot of time in the bus, that’s when I start reading again, because there’s so much time to kill. So right now, I’ve started about 30, but I haven’t finished any in the past six months. But the latest one I started I just got from Dani Filth from Cradle of Filth, and it’s called The Gospel Of Filth. It’s leather-bound, it looks like a big Bible, and it’s about the whole black metal movement, including all the horror movies, the Edgar Allan Poe literary things, all the satanic things, and the whole history of England. They spent five years writing it, and I find it really fascinating.

SHOCKHOUND: You’re now 33, the so-called “Christ Age,” when the true path you should be on becomes clear to you.

VALO: So you’re saying that tomorrow, all of a sudden, I could wake up and realize I need to be a lawyer? [Laughs] Now I’ll have to start doing math or something instead of sleeping in! But you do get small complexes as you get grow older. And it’s a funny thing — I spent such a long time living a debauched rock n’ roll lifestyle, and I kinda felt really old at the end of it. And then when I stopped all intoxicants, all of a sudden I feel like 14 again — I feel like a teenager, like ten years of my life have vanished. I may have the body of a frail 33-year-old, but my mind is like a pre-teen fella. So it’s an interesting situation to be in.



SHOCKHOUND: The last time I saw you, you were drinking backstage on a tour sponsored by Jagermeister. How did you know it was time to quit?

VALO: Well, it was basically when I felt so bad that I had to go to the doctor, and the doctor told me that I would have heart failure if I didn’t stop. And he told me to go to the emergency room, straightaway. To which I replied — and this is like a scene from a bad movie — “I can’t because I’ve got interviews to do!” So that’s how it went. But I started taking it a bit more seriously. And there’s only so much shitting blood and puking blood, each and every day, all the way through, that a person can take. And when it really starts to affect you, not only mentally but physically, to the point where you’re just a shell, or a shadow, of a man? I was just in a bad way. There had to be a change. And I welcomed the change. So I do miss the craziness of rock n’ roll, but then again, I don’t miss the hangovers.

SHOCKHOUND: Your average touring rocker always grabs a hotel business card when they check in, just so they can be pointed home after a hard night of partying.

VALO: Well, I did the same. But I have this weird kinda thing where it doesn’t matter what kind of shape you’re in, you always find your way back, you always wake up in the same place. So I’ve never been picking myself out of a gutter the next day. I might’ve passed out in the gutter, but I still miraculously always found myself back in my hotel room or my home after a party. So that was just one of the things that started incapacitating me, and something had to be done. I didn’t even have the energy to enjoy horror movies as much as I used to — I was living in one. So I had to pick a side, and I chose enjoying horror movies rather than being part of one. Because I was turning into a Universal monster myself.

SHOCKHOUND: So how did you quit? By yourself, or with help?

VALO: I’m a workaholic, and I’m really bad at taking days off. So I ended up going to a place in Malibu, and I was there for about a month. The first week-and-a-half was all shiver and shake, and I was feeling really bad and sleeping it all off. And after that, it’s been all good. And I’m happy I experienced it, because I was in bad shape, and now I know just how bad it can get. And now I don’t even want to tempt myself with a glass of red wine, because alcohol is made for people to get fucked up on — it’s not made for civil conversation. And I didn’t enjoy champagne by the glass — it was by the bottle. But nothing’s changed that much. People keep asking me how I feel, and I say, “The world’s still shit. I just see it clearer now!”

SHOCKHOUND: Well, your twenties are made for the carnal. But the thirties are more about the spiritual, it seems.

VALO: I don’t like the word “spiritual.” Or “atheist,” either — I don’t like any of those terms. When I was in rehab, doing my AA serenity prayers, I was always saying “Black Sabbath, give me the serenity to…” or “Ozzy, give me the serenity to…” And people were pissed off at me at first, but then they started laughing about it. But if you can edit down the chaos and see yourself from a more objective point of view — if you call that spirituality, then that’s fine. But I don’t believe in any higher powers. I just don’t. I believe in people, I believe in friends, and I believe in love, but not as a godlike entity or idea. And the biggest thing I’ve learned is, don’t sweep your shit underneath the carpet — carry it on you with pride. Mistakes are there to be made and to be learned from and to enable you to make new mistakes again. And everybody has pain to carry, but a lot of people don’t carry the pain with pride. I think pain is like a beauty mark!

SHOCKHOUND: Has all of this made you a better man in your romantic relationships?

VALO: Ha! It hasn’t! And I don’t have the time for a relationship right now — I’m in a relationship with the album. And I think Screamworks is a cathartic, Munchian, existential scream of letting everything go and not being too worried what people might think of you. And that’s a very punk ethic in itself. It’s saying “Fuck you!” in maybe the most profound way, as opposed to profane. But again, all of that stuff happened very organically —  it wasn’t any sudden revelation of any kind. And when you have little to lose, why not put everything you have into the music you love rather than hold back? And that might translate into the more direct, energetic, in-your-face vibe of the album. And “Love In Theory And Practice” is a jokey version of Aleister Crowley’s Magick In Theory And Practice, because for me the only magical things in life are love and music. So it’s something I like to celebrate with music — all the confusing aspects of love.

SHOCKHOUND: The album seems a bit preoccupied with death. What do you believe comes next?

VALO: My opinion of the afterlife? Well, I’m still hoping that there isn’t one. I’d rather do everything here and now, and then figure out what to do in the next life should one suddenly appear. And I love deadlines, so I’m really glad that I’m gonna die one day. And I know that a Finnish male lives approximately 74 years, and if I smoke, that cuts it down a bit. So maybe I’ll croak at 68, and it’s good to know. I’m 33 now, so I still have half my life to go. And I think I can live with that deadline.

 

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