31.01.06

Catch HIM on MTV.com right now
HIM recently performed a handful songs at the MTV.com studios in New York and they’re putting a song up each week. This week, check out a live version of Wings of a butterfly. Check it out!

Win a Meet & Greet with Ville
On iLove Magazine you have the chance to win a Meet & Greet with HIM during their German gigs. You have to be regestired to take part and to answer the following question: Which album was completely recorded in the US for the first time?

Poster of Helldone Festival
For everybody who’ve read our review already knows that we are running a competition to win the Helldone Festival Poster. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should do it and get to know the details for it.

Vote for HIM
You have the chance to support your fave band at the Metal Storm Awards. They are nominated for: The best Suomi Metal Album. So head over, log in and vote for them.

Apu Scans
By clicking on the following links you can view the scans for the Apu Magazine. Thanks to thetis for the scans.
Cover ** Page1 ** Page2 ** Page3 ** Page4 ** Page5 ** Page6

27.01.06

Orkus in English
On 07.02.06 the first English issue of the German Orkus magazine will be out. Issue 1 contains features and stories with : Moi dix Mois (title-story), HIM, Covenant, Dimmu Borgir, Ministry, London After Midnight, Suicide Commando, Leaves' Eyes, Tiamat, Negative, The Mission, Arcturus, Leaether Strip, Cradle Of Filth, Dope Stars Inc., Old Man's Child, The Rasmus and many more! Source: MNS Store

Apu - Finnish Mag
In the current issue of the Finnish magazine Apu you can find an article about HIM with some different kind of pictures of Ville. If someone out there has the magazine, it would be really nice if you could scan it for us and mail it to HIMforfans @ gmx.net. Source: Apu.fi

“Sleepwatching Vol.1” DVD
The DVD includes 22 songs from various artists as well as an interview with Ville (Bonusmaterial). For more information head over to MNS Store.

26.01.06

Helldone
If you are interested you can view a couple of photos we shot during the Helldone at Suiciderock.com. We hope you will like them!? More pic’s of the Festival will follow soon.

Kerrang 1092
In this weeks Kerrang you can find a poster of Ville. It is the same pic as you can view here.

Metal Edge
In Metal Edge’s March 2006 issue you can find some pictures of HIM at the “Viva la Bands” Tour. Enjoy! Thanks to VillesButterfly for the scans!

Type O Negative Cover
By clicking here you can listen to the cover of Type O Negative’s Black No.1.

HIMforfans - MySpace
On our MySpace page you can view the MTV2’s Live special from Detroit. Check it out and add us to your friendlist.

23.01.06

Tourdates
We updated some details for the shows in Russia and Portugal. Just check our Schedule. Thanks to Sandra N. for the information about the Lissabon show.

N-Joy Secret Gig
The German radio channel N-Joy will broadcast on Thursday on 23.00h (local time) a part of the secret castle gig from the promotion tour in September 2005. Thanks to Andrea for the info.

The Bamboozle
HIM will rock on May 7th, 2006 the Bamboozle. For more information check their Homepage.

Orkus
In the current issue of the German magazine Orkus you can find a summary of the “biggest Stars” 2005. The guys of HIM got some good votes:
The most impressing personality of the Year: 08. Ville Valo
The most impressing live expirience: 08. HIM
Best CD: 04. HIM - Dark Light
The best cover of Orkus: 04. HIM (September issue)
Best Film / DVD of the year: 10. HIM - Love Metal Archives Vol.1
Best Song: 03. HIM - Wings of a butterfly
Best videoclip: 02. HIM - Wings of a butterfly
Best album coverartwork: 08. HIM - Dark Light
Best keyboarder: 02. Burton
Best drummer: 02. Gas
Best bassplayer: 02. Migé
Best guitarplayer: 01. Linde & 08. Lily Lazer
Best singer: 01. Ville Valo
Congratulations for the guys!!! The scans can be found here.

JS online
Journal Sentinel published an article about HIM. Click here and read it.

21.01.06

Emma Gaala
HIM are nominated for the finnish music awards in 6 categories:

Best Rock Album 2005 Dark Light - HIM Kuolematon - Yö Kovemmat kädet - PMMP Se ei olekaan niin - Maija Vilkkumaa Best Band HIM Yö Nightwish PMMP Best Rock Album Dark Light - HIM Kiila - Apulanta Se ei olekaan niin - Maija Vilkkumaa Hide From The Sun - The Rasmus Best National Band Antti Tuisku HIM Kari Tapio Maija Vilkkumaa Nightwish PMMP Teräsbetoni The Rasmus Uniklubi Yö Best DVD …Gloria Mundi - Smak Love Metal Archives Vol.1 - HIM Kotiteollisuus DVD - Kotiteollisuus Video jää pystyyn - videohistoria 1978-2003 - Eppu Normaali Best Song No Fear - The Rasmus Oo siellä jossain mun - PMMP Pelimies - Martti Vainaa & Sallitut aineet Perutaan häät - Anne Mattila Taivas lyö tulta - Teräsbetoni Wings of a Butterfly - HIM

The Emma Gaala will take place on 04.03.06. The show will be broadcasted in Finnish TV and on the same time on Radio “Ylex”. For more information click here.

Kerrang 1091
In this weeks Kerrang! Ville has been an editor. The scans for that can be found here. Thanks to Mamucium @ the Valo_daily LJ community for scanning those pic`s...

Werchter Festival 2006
Blitzkrieg.noise announced the following schedule for the Werchter Festival 2006. Also HIM are announced, but nothing is confirmed yet.
Thuesday, June 29th
Main Stage
Kaiser Chiefs - Black Eyed Peas - Anouk - David Bowie - Underworld
Marquee
The Infadels - Ghinzu - !!! - Madness - Front 242 - Tiga

Friday, June 30th
Main Stage
Godsmack - Monster Magnet - HIM - The Darkness - Deftones - System Of A Down - Tool - The Prodigy/Korn
Marquee
My Chemical Romance - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Scissor Sisters - Janez Detd - LCD Soundsystem - Goldfrapp - Soulwax Nite Versions - Kraftwerk - Royksopp

Saturday, July 1st
Main Stage
Gorki - Supergrass - Weezer - Kanye West - Franz Ferdinand - Linkin Park - Placebo - Depeche Mode
Marquee
The Butterfly Effect - Maximo Park - Hard-Fi - Kasabian - An Pierlé - Spinvis - Starsailor - The Strokes - Praga Khan

Sunday, July 2nd
Main Stage
My Morning Jacket - Zornik - The Killers - Missy Elliot - The Fugees - dEUS - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Marquee
Absynth Minded - Editors - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - John Legend - The Arcade Fire - Bloc Party - The Mars Volta - Hooverphonic - Gorillaz

17.01.06

NRZ
In the German newspaper “NRZ” you can find an interview with Ville. He confirmed that Lily will be on the German Tour.

New Zealand
HIM will also rock New Zealand on 28.03.06 at the St. James. We also updated the Tourschedule. If you have any information, which is missing like Ticketinfo for Portugal, Address for Spain, please send us a mail to HIMforfans @ gmx.net. Thanks in advance. A special thanks goes to TheLadymayCry from DarkSecretClub.com for the info about the Greek shows.

16.01.06

Interviews
On Suiciderock you can read interviews with Deep Insight, Bleak and Sunride. They also have some competitions over there. Interviews with Charon, Blake, The Black League and Lagwagon will follow. So, if you`re interested in those bands, head over to suiciderock.com.

New pictures by REPFOTO
On REPFOTO you can view some new cool pictures of Ville, which have been made in the UK in January 2006 by Paul Harries. On these pic’s you can see Ville’s new tattoos of Charles Baudelaire (he was a French poet and he wrote a book of poems called “Flowers of evil”. This lyrics show up in Funeral of Hearts) and the other one above his right nipple, which is Máy. Also you can view some more pictures of him as editior at Kerrang!. Check them out here!

Sat1 - Breakfasttv
On 11.01.06 Sat1 broadcasted the Breakfast tv “Frühstücksfernsehen”. This little clip you can view by clicking here. They told about that a girl who won a trip to Helsinki including tickets for the Helldone and a Meet&Greet with the band. Thanks to Lou and the heartagram-club board for that.

Vote for Killing Loneliness
Now you can vote for the upcoming single “Killing Loneliness” at TRL. The most wanted clips can be seen from Monday to Friday at 16h.

Mannheim & Köln gigs
3 of the German gigs are already sold out. So hurry up if you don’t have your ticket for the German Tour. The following shows are sold out:
Mannheim, 11.02.06
Köln, 12.02.06 &
Leipzig, 17.02.06

Killing Loneliness Release date postponed
The release date for the upcoming single “Killing Loneliness” is postponed for the UK. The single will be released now on April,24th.

11.01.06

American MTV2
A live HIM TV special - "HIM: Live in Detroit" - will premiere on January 21st at 8pm EST on MTV2. Stay tuned for repeat performance dates on the channel. Don't miss it!

Win tickets for the HIM show in Hannover
N-joy is running a competition again and you have the chance to win tickets for the HIM gig on 14.02.06 in Hannover.... Click here , fill in the form your name and address and with a little bit of luck they will call you. If you are on the phone, just say: "Ich will mit N-Joy zu den Stars - enjoy the music" which means "I want to N-Joy to the Stars - ..." . Good luck for everyone who is taking part! (credit: darling from HC board)

Hultsfred Festival in Sweden
When you want to rock with HIM on the Hultsfred festival 2006 in Sweden, you can vote for them and two other bands by clicking here. If you have choosen your three bands you want to see there, click on “Rösta” on the bottom of the page to submit your vote.

Zero February 2006
In the 6th issue of Zero magazine you can find an article about HIM. In the same issue you can also find a calendar with HIM in one of the month. We posted them on our photobucket but mamucium scanned them in. Thank you for that!

09.01.06

UK & Ireland Tour rescheduled
Today we received the following information from himonline.tv:
“Dear All,
Due to an injury on a slippery street after the show on New Years Eve at Tavastia, Helsinki, HIM´s guitarist Linde suffered a fractured wristbone on his left hand. He has to keep a cast on until the end of January.

The UK and Ireland tour, January 16th- 26th, have been rescheduled to April, the new dates are:
April
Tue 18 - Manchester Apollo
Wed 19 - Manchester Apollo
Thu 20 - Birmingham Academy
Fri 21 - Birmingham Academy
Sun 23 - Glasgow Academy
Mon 24 - Newcastle Academy
Tue 25 - Brixton Academy
Thu 27 - Dublin Ambassador
Fri 28 - Dublin Ambassador

All other dates in Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand will go ahead as planned.
Tickets for the original shows will be valid for the rearranged dates.
The next single to be taken from ‘Dark Light’ will be ‘Killing Loneliness’ on January 23rd.
Click here to pre-order the single now.” Good improvement to Linde!

“Poison Arrow” DVD competition
The lucky winner of the “Poison Arrow” DVD competiton is Nicole Aeschbach from Switzerland. Congratualtions to you dear. The DVD will reach you in the next days.

GET DARK LIGHT ON VINYL
HIM's Dark Light album will be available on a special pressing of double-vinyl starting January 24th, but you can pre-order your copy right now. Hurry - there is a VERY limited amount that will be available, so get it now before they run out. Click here to pre-order your copy.

07.01.06

Ville & Gas on "Carcass"-Country-Album
"Welcome to Carcass Cuntry" will include contributions from H.I.M. drummer Gas, H.I.M. frontman Ville Valo (bass/backing vocals), former CARCASS guitarist/FIREBIRD frontman Bill Steer (lead guitar, harmonica, slide guitar, vocals), AMORPHIS guitarists Esa Holopainen and Tomi Koivusaari (guitars), keyboardist Santeri Kallio (keyboards) and bassist Niclas Etelävuori (bass), ex-FAITH NO MORE bassist Billy Gould, and former CARCASS drummer Ken Owen.
Source: blabbermouth.net

In the new issue of Kerrang! magazine...
HIM
THE SONGS THAT BLEW VILLE'S MIND

Sonic Seducer
In the January issue of the German mag Sonic Seducer you can find an interview with Ville and you can also find a cd, which includes:
a clip of Killing Loneliness Live in Munich / Zirkus Krone,
The 69 Eyes ~Feel Berlin~ LIVE MÉra Luna Festival 2005
Interview with 69 Eyes
Nightwish ~Come over me~ LIVE MÉra Luna 2003
Negative ~Frozen to lose it all~ VIDEO
Apoptygma Berzerk ~Shine on~ VIDEO and many more
Thanks to shira2010 for the info and the scans! Scan 01 - Scan 02 - advertise

Goth-rock hero's darkest secret article
Ville Valo, lead singer of elegantly doom-laden Finnish band Him, tells Robert Sandall why he's such a big fan of John Humphrys. To read this article, click here.

03.01.06

Happy New Year
First of all, we wish you all a happy great new year with a lot of fun and all the best for 2006. Now we’re back from Helldone Festival and we brought you some photos with. To view them click here. The required password is: helldone

Ilta Lethi 02.01.06
In the issue of yesterdays Ilta Lehti was an article about HIM. The fans, who are able to read finnish, can do this here. The article is about how he has the first proper holiday in 10 years and that he is doing normal things during his small vacation before the next tour starts like renew his astma prescription and fix two teeths. He still hasn’t got a new mobile after he got robbed in the states and that Jonna gets all his calls and she is a great assistant  He also said its pretty psyko coming home doing nothing after everything they have gone through,new album, US market and so on.

Helsingin Sanomat 29.12.05
In the issue from 29.12.05 was an article of HIM. Thulsa Doom translated it. Thanks to her for the article.

HIM made a breakthrough in the US this year

The vocalist and songwriter of HIM Ville Valo sits again at the cornertable of the restaurant Sea horse in Helsinki. He sat at the same table last August before HIM went to their 3rd US tour. In few months a lot has happened – HIM’s newest album made finnish music history by reaching the 18th place on the album chart in US.
“This much has never happened to me before, both in the band and in the personal life”, Ville Valo, 29, goes through the happenings of the year and takes a black woolen hoodie off his head. He has changed his style often, now his hair is again growing.

Coming out of Valo’s sleeve you can see potreats tattooed on his right arm. Right above the wrist there are skilfully and meticulously(?) tattoeed b&w pictures of the writers Timo K Mukka and Charles Baudelaire (he was a French poet and he wrote a book of poems called “Flowers of evil”. This lyrics show up in Funeral of Hearts)
Ville tells that next one will be Charles Bukowski (he was an American writer from the Beat generation and his lyrics show up in “Under the Rose”, which you can orginally read in his poetry book “Burning in water and drowning in flame”). The aim is to fill the arm with literature(?) idols. “Jyrki Hämäläinen can wait”, Ville laughs and grins.
Valo wants to let the writers that are important to him to his skin [weirdo sentence]. He is a musician but the writers who made a deal with the dark side of the life seem to be a source of inspiration, for real.
Many rockstars have tattooed dragons and thunderbirds to their backs, but on Valo’s back there are the dark eyes of the father of the mystery literature Edgar Allan Poe.
Here we have a genuine romantic.

Ville Valo is in a good way a contradictory(?) person. He is civilized and truly well-read(?) person who acts like a gentleman and speaks english with abrupt(?) british accent. At the same time he is a pipoheaded(??) guy from Helsinki who talks about sklodsomething and skeboista [can’t understand/ translate these Helsinki words] and who wants his kossu handwarm(?) because “it tastes better that way”.
The records of this mans band has sold worldwide almost 4 million copies and the latest achievement is the conquest of USA, as stupid as it sounds. There has also been back kicks(?) on the way. During the tour Valo was drugged and robbed and after that he spent the rest of the tour sober. The result was that according to his own words he did the best gigs of his life.
When it comes to HIM the most memorable thing was making the album in LA last spring. According to Valo the band has never before gotten that much time to be in the studio.

Valo’s, who is happily dating, highlight of the year wasn’t any of the accomplishments in America. “The best thing was that for the first time in 10 years I spent the christmas with my family, in pyjamas and slippers(?).
One can easily understand that. Valo has worked like crazy this year and has been nine months away from home. After touring for years sort of middle-ageding probably comes naturally.

The manager Seppo Vesterinen on the other hand spent his christmas in the sunny California, LA. Vesterinen’s answer to the question about the highlight of the year is understandably(?) more business based.
“Band’s deal with Sire records”, Vesterinen says with no hesitating.
The deal with the US company guarantees a distribution to all over the world where people buy records. It is the base that the record sales stand on [again a weirdo sentence].
Vesterinen doesn’t hide his satisfaction about the good results in US.
“Of course I’m happy and even little bit surprised. I’m sure no-one expected the album to go that high on the chart. Realistic expectation was TOP40.
The album didn’t stay on top for long but it still is in TOP200. Last week Dark light rose again up to place 165. So it is selling little by little all the time. At the moment it has sold 200000 copies in US and 600000 worldwide. According to Vesterinen HIM is in the US about the same size as Franz Ferdinand.
“The most important thing is that it stays in TOP200 as long as possible. At the moment all the percents are again ascending.”

For the next year Vesterinen is going through the possibilities to get HIM’s music to films and video games. The tv is pretty much excluded marketing chanel in US when it comes to music.
“All channels are barely reality tv”, Vesterinen says.
He hopes that HIM’s album would sell the same way until the summer. In the calendar the time from April to May has been reserved for North-America. To the most important market area has to be went time after time. “In the last hand (???) the lifeblood(????) of a rockband is longevity(???).” [damn seppo using all these fancy words ], Vesterinen tells. But you can’t plan too much. “We live in a improvisation economy”.

But Ville Valo plans and thinks about the future of the band to pretty far ahead.
“I’m the kind of person that I always thinks about the schedules, I don’t know why, but maybe it helps a songwriter to have deadlines. I like deadlines – and going beyond(????) them.”

Ville counts months, tours all over the world, the time left for songwriting, studio, singles, shooting videos and finally says that the next album will come in the spring 2007 or if it goes slower, in the autumn 2007. Dark light has done the ground work(??) in the US. Unless one of the next singles suddenly make the sales rise wildly, the pressure is directed to the next album. According to Ville it’ll be more colorful than Dark light.

Maybe with that album the band can rise to the TOP10 and make the final breakthrough in the big league of US and also all over the world. It is possible, it all depends about the timing, work and luck. “I have a feeling that the next album will be much more essential(?)”, Ville says and laughs. (thanks to Thulsa Doom once again)