HIM Take Advice From Melissa Auf Der Maur

Modern music is all about endless categories these days. In the midst of this, there is a band from Finland who you may not have heard of (yet), who decided to cut the bullshit and just make up their own genre — love metal. They went so far as to use it as the title for the album that precedes their fifth record and Sire debut, Dark Light. The band are HIM.

"The idea behind Love Metal was that we were such egocentric young bastards from Finland that we thought we'd invent our own category and then we'd definitely be the only ones in it. So, even if the record sales went down, we'd still be number one!" lead singer Ville Valo says with a chuckle.

"So many journalists and so many critics had the problem of categorizing what we do. Some people called us a goth band, or a goth metal band, or a metal band with pop sensibilities, or whatever. And I was like, 'That's so boring!' And let's have something tongue-in-cheek like black metal or white metal, and why don't we put those extremes together and have love metal? Because I think, in a way, it describes really well what we do — the attempt to mix the sentimentality of Elvis with the ballsiness of AC/DC."

HIM and Dark Light do defy most conventional categories. The songs are lush and dramatic, but at the same time they are infused with a dark edge of something hard and intense. HIM are a band that live to contradict, and while they've found great success overseas over the past 10 years, the Canadian market remains an untapped mystery. Valo is looking forward to a Canadian visit in mid-November, since he's gotten some good recommendations from a trustworthy source.

"We talked with Melissa Auf Der Maur on our last tour in the States and, y'know, we became friends [Auf Der Maur opened for HIM], and she was telling stories about Canada actually being very much like Finland," Valo muses. "From what I've understood, it's pretty mellow, so I'd like to see it."

From Evanescence to My Chemical Romance, dark, gloomy rock is all the rage today in North American mainstream youth culture. Scandinavian bands have been cornering that market for years, and HIM are no exception. Valo was moaning his lyrics atop grinding, wailing guitars back when some of today's new dark rockers were still being dressed by their mommies. Valo won't name names, but he does have some words of advice to offer for today's angry young rockers with bottles of black hair dye clutched tight in their hands.

"Learn how to play music and learn to respect music before you start fucking learning how to do your eyeliner or clothes," he says. "That's very often the blessing and the curse of digital technology with albums — sounds really, really sterile, and bands that can't even play are edited on the ProTools file in such a way that it sounds OK, but then when you get to see them live, they're a fucking bunch of shit. So, y'know, don't do drugs and behave yourself and always open up at the door when a lady comes in."

Words to live by?

"There's not many of them," smirks Valo.

HIM's Canadian tour dates:
November 13 Toronto, ON @ Kool Haus
November 14 Montreal, QC @ Metropolis