"There’s beauty in the fact we didn’t strangle each other at the end." Ville Valo would love to reunite goth metal icons HIM

Former HIM vocalist Ville Valo hopes that the goth metal band will reunite one day and says that all of the members remain friends despite their inactivity.

Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, the frontman says that he “would love to play with the lads again someday” following their farewell gig at Tavastia in Helsinki on New Year’s Eve 2017, even though he hasn’t “really been in touch with them much”.

He continues, “But I miss those fellows. They are my brothers. But there’s also beauty in the fact we didn’t strangle each other at the end, or start travelling in separate limos. So there is that to be said. I felt it was the right way to bury the corpse. Him was and is my life. It was very hard to let go of that.”

One of the most commercially successful rock acts to come from Finland, HIM were initially active from 1991 to 1993 before reuniting from 1995 to 2017. Their second album, 2000’s Razorblade Romance, topped the charts in their home country and also made them a mainstream force in such international markets as Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Their first five albums, from 1997’s Greatest Hits Vol. 666 to 2005’s Dark Light, have all been certified Platinum.

Valo reflects on what brought the band to an end during the Hammer interview. “The bittersweet thing about it was that we were still good friends, we’d just grown apart,” he says. “In regards to the farewell tour, it was nice to play when we had a finite date that it was going to end. By setting the end date first, you don’t have to have reserves. Every night felt like it was our last in a way.”

Following HIM’s split, Valo started a solo career under the pseudonym VV. His album Neon Noir came out in 2023 and he toured until May 2024, when he played a set at London’s Royal Albert Hall that he promoted as the end of the VV project. Talking to Hammer just before the show, the singer revealed that he had been writing more music, and that it would have the same dark romantic vibe as HIM and VV.

“I’ve tried to come up with some new ideas, but they’re not there yet,” he said. “There needs to be an ‘Aha!’ moment. It’s not necessarily going to be hugely different for the person who maybe gets to listen to it one day, but those are big deals for me: trying to find a new perspective or a new angle to what I do.”

Read the full interview with Valo in an upcoming issue with Metal Hammer.

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