Finnish made their 2015′ New Year resolution: they promised their fans to get down to writing new music shortly after the winter holiday break
December 12, 2014
Over the last few weeks HIM didn’t sit down much to catch their breath. First, they supported Fields Of The Nephilim in London for two nights at the beginning of December, celebrating Fields Of The Nephilim 30th anniversary. Now, the band headed to the U.S. for eight gigs with guests Motionless In White and Wounds – the concert round titled Love Metal Archives Tour.
“Then that’s gonna be it for touring for a while, because then we’ll have been on the road more or less, on and off, for about a year and a half. So that’s a long time for us”, Valo told KWSS-FM radio station in Arizona. “So it’d be nice to sit down for a wee bit and start working on some new stuff”.
European fans haven’t heard many news from Ville Valo and his mates this year, but that was only because the band was busy touring on both sides of the Atlantic. The band’s last album, Tears On Tape has been promoted for a year and a half in Europe, North and South America and Australia.
In addition to that, HIM played China for the first time ever. And it wasn’t an easy one for the Finnish rockers. “We went to the first festival [in Shanghai] and all of a sudden people said that we can’t play”, said the vocalist in the interview for the Aquarian magazine. “Or we can only play three songs or don’t play at all. We just flew 10 hours, and we’re supposed to be playing a one-hour set, so what the hell is going on? Nobody told us what was going on. We couldn’t understand anything, and then with a bit of bargaining we were able to play like six songs, then they threw us off the stage”, revealed outraged Ville.
“We said to ourselves we have one more gig, so we flew over to Beijing, then 20 minutes before the gig a massive sandstorm hit the festival that tore up the main stages including the roof. We were like, what the hell? We had traveled all in all five days, and we were able to play five songs. We were laughing about it. It was like 8,000 miles and one song per day.” The hardworking band decided to do their best to compensate it to their countless Chinese fans who had been waiting for so many years for HIM to come and play there, so the group played one club show and one full-set festival gig later on, in September.
The band’s extensive 2014 schedule will round off traditionally, with a hometown Helldone Festival on New Year’s Eve at the invariable Tavastia club in Helsinki. HIM will share the stage with Daniel Cavabagh of Anathema on December 31, while the festival’s previous day will see Children of Bodom and Paradise Lost as headliners of the New Year Metal Party on the same stage.
HIM will enjoy their share of winter holidays as well, but not for too long, before they start writing new songs for their ninth album. Meanwhile, the band’s fans can become owners of special CD and vinyl box set reissues of the group’s first four albums, which includes extra live tracks, outtakes, and acoustic bonuses. The vinyl compilation is titled Lashes To Ashes, Lust To Dust: A Vinyl Retrospective ’96-’03.
“I was trying to find shitty old cassettes, and I wasn’t able to find that much stuff unfortunately”, Valo laughs. “so the bonus tracks are live tracks from radio that haven’t been released before. You can’t have it all”.
