Отправлено: 16.08.05 07:55. Заголовок: Биография "Dark Light"

”It took us quite a while to get to America because I had to overcome my fear of flying,” Ville Valo sighs, only half-jokingly. But, then again, maybe it has been a matter of HIM growing their own wings and really learning to fly.

New York City, 2004
After seeing out their previous contract HIM decide that the time had come to take the next big step. They sign with Sire Records, home of The Ramones, whose ”Poison Heart” they used to play live, and Madonna, whose ”Live To Tell” will forever hold a sacred place in Ville Valo’s heart (school dance, that girl… you get the picture).

”In ”Dark Light”, the song, we tried to create that special kind of mirrorball ambience,” Ville reveals. ”It’s our open invitation for people to, hmm, copulate.”

The title track isn’t the only song on ”Dark Light” that can be described as cinematic. The years spent listening to scores by composers such as Angelo Badalamenti (known for his collaboration with director David Lynch, another firm HIM favourite) are seemingly starting to rub off… Theirs is a movie of epic landscapes and grand emotions (by the way, the working title of ”Dark Light” was ”Politics of the Heart”). Just take a look at the album cover portraying HIM as the last bastion on earth. It’s us against them. The darkness is penetrated by the light of a lone beacon, the last ray of hope in a world gone crazy.

First single ”Wings of a Butterfly”
The beacon appears also in the video for the first single ”Wings of a Butterfly”, directed by Meiert Avis (U2, Bruce Springsteen) and shot deep down in Bladerunner Country (also known as Union Station in LA…).

You will also come across the Heartagram, the mythical HIM symbol that has started a life of it’s own, making it’s way all over the world. Spraypainted on walls, printed on shirts, carved in wood, tattooed on various body parts. One of the proud owners of a Heartagram tattoo is self-appointed super fan, professional skater Bam Margera. He has been tirelessly preaching the gospel of HIM on his MTV show and word has spread like wildfire through the skating community.

”I can relate to that,” Valo says. ”I used to skate too when I was younger and through that network I came across all this cool new alternative stuff. Bands like Bad Brains, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys…”

But it’s not only the skaters who have gotten the message. There are the punks, the goths, the metalheads… 50 % male, 50 % female. A community of outcasts connected by their beliefs and via the internet. You can find countless HIM fan sites from Croatia to Argentina, from Russia to the US of A. Many of them are in countries the band hasn’t even visited yet. The truth is out there!

Kicking off with the menacing ”Vampire Heart” the new HIM album is a tour de force full of emotional battlecries intermixed with lullabies not suitable for children. Glorious choruses that you can’t help but sing along to. By the end of a cathartic ten track trek, as we congregate to rejoice in life during the ”Nightside of Eden”, I’m sure you too will agree.

March 2005
HIM start recording their fifth studio album at the legendary Paramour Mansion in Silver Lake, California. After committing their sins to tape the band, plus producer Tim Palmer (U2, Ozzy Osbourne, Pearl Jam, Tin Machine/Bowie), relocate to New York City to mix the album at the Electric Lady. Under the watchful eyes of the Mansion’s several silent movie era ghosts, as well as the ghost of Jimi Hendrix who is known to reside at the Lady, HIM produce a haunting masterpiece called ”Dark Light”. An album of live-for-the-moment urgency and timeless beauty.

HIM are in full flight. Dive into the ”Dark Light”.

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