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HIM frontman Ville Valo seems totally at home sitting poolside at his hotel in L.A. Sipping tea between cigarettes, the lead singer of the first Finnish band ever to go gold in the U.S. is happy to be back in L.A. after spending months at home recording the band’s follow up to 2005’s Dark Light, the aforementioned gold record. Then again, if the quintet hadn’t been at home during the dark, cold winter months they might not have recorded the aptly named Venus Doom, an album that Valo describes as being “Like a trip into my personal hell to a certain extent.”

Musically, the album is the dark, hard rocking soundtrack necessary to accompany Valo’s downward descent. “I felt that we needed a lot less keyboards and there was just going to be more punching to the face type of thing,” Valo says, referring to the differences between Dark Light and Venus Doom. “The whole vibe seems fresh cause the direction we had with the last album we couldn’t go further. So the album sonically is a bit more sparse. That’s the direction we’re heading; heavier, doomier, and gloomier, and it’s great to tour that kind of stuff.”

HIM will get the chance to see how the new material translates to the stage over the summer when they join Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, and more on the main stage of L.P.’s Projekt Revolution tour. “All the bands are kind of crossover in what they do, that’s really interesting,” Valo says. “This is the first kind of traveling festival type of thing we’ve done cause they don’t have anything like that back in Europe, so it’s exciting.” He’s also intrigued by the eclecticism of the tour. “That’s one of the reasons we wanted to be there,” he says of the mix of bands.

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• Genre: Alternative / Rock / Metal
• Members: Ville Valo: Vocals, Burton Emmerson: Keyboards, Gas Lipstick: Drums, Mige Amour: Bass, Linde: Guitar
• Label: Sire
• Label Type: Major
• Website: www.heartagram.com

• 02.02 PRE-ORDER THE NEW LIVE DVD/CD "DIGITAL VERSATILE DOOM" ONLY AT HEARTAGRAM.COM!
• 01.28 HEARTAGRAM DAY, SUICIDEGIRLS CONTEST AND ONE DAY STORE SALE!!
• 01.11 10 Short HIM Films Exclusively in the Heartagram Club
• 01.10 Winners Of HIM’s Top 8
• 12.18 New Bleed Well EP Is Available Now!
• 12.13 Kill Hannah Reminder
• 12.13 Vote For Ville!
• 12.07 Support Our Friends Kill Hannah
• 11.30 Video From The Hollywood Instore
• 11.30 undefined HIM - Bleed Well

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• Member Since: 09.05.07
• Last Seen: 09.01.08