Interview Ville Valo _ Studio Brussel

Stu bru: Deep shadows and brilliant highlights sounds more positive, happier, when you compare it with the previous one.

Ville: yeah there's a bit more light at the end of the tunnel. In a way that it's also actually some dimension, which is true I heard it when I heard that album a couple of weeks ago, it sounds really relaxed which I really like about the album because it's just: we've been playing a lot of gigs and we're just happy that we're able to go back into the studio again and stuff like that. We had a really good time doing it. That's probably it, the whole performance is more positive and relaxed. We were under a lot of pressure when we did Razorblade Romance. Nobody really knew how it was going to turn out, because we had a new drummer we had a new keyboard-player, nobody really knew about anything. And lyrically it's a bit more hopeful because I thought you know that humorous side on Razorblade Romance wasn't really perceived by all people but it's a really humorous album for me because basically they're all love songs but they're negatives of classic love songs. Like Burry me deep inside your heart that slow tune which we're going to play tonight as well. Well that 'let me wake up in your arms hear everything's not all right' or whatever. If it would be: 'let me wake up in your arms and hear everything is alright' it would be a classic Richard Marks you know, pop tune. And that's why I tried to do with that sort of thing, just like turn it upside down and make it like clearly and that's, for me personally, a very humorous thing on the album. There's Gothicism going on in there and it was done, sort of like did it so much all the resurrection we used loads of like gothic imagery, stuff like that. We did it so much that there wasn't space really to do any more. You have to change a bit you know, it's nice to have a sort of theme going on. We wanted to be a bit more open, hopefully, for interpretation. It's not so clearly about boy and girl relationships as the previous one. The songs can be about friendship or they can be even religious, like close to the flame for example, it can be a song about God if you want it to.

Stu Bru: After the success of the previous one, a lot of people expected something else then what you brought out now.

Ville: I'm not sure, you know what people, you never know. Probably the silliest thing you can do because we're on a constant move you know our first album Greatest love songs vol. 666 is still different from Razorblade Romance but the heart is the same, the core, the essence of the music is the same. But the ways of performing and producing it's always been different. It's just a nice thing to keep on going you know rather then like being AC/DC. AC/DC they're beautiful but they're probably the only band in the world that can do like exactly the same albums like for 30 years or whatever.

Stu Bru: But I mean, a lot of metal fans will be disappointed because you took another road now. A lot of girls will be happy though.

Ville: *laughs* Well erm, I've never consider the band really to be a 'metal act' so there is more about hard rocking stuff personally. Because now it is like metal is considert to be bands like that nu metal thing, you know in America. And, personally for me, like heavy music is hard rock or what ever: Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Hopefully we're being that way, hard and edgy but in my opinion the album is better polished to…you know, personally. It's a good album I like the songs but, it could've been a bit more edgier a bit more organic, but that happens when you're 10 months in the studio you start to have a like erm that sort of Def Leppard-disease getting into, you know, trying to perfect every little minor detail from there and sometimes you know, the ugly little mistakes and things they can be beautiful as well. They can make it a bit more lively. No we've done an album like that and next time we're going to do totally different.

Stu Bru: too much producers at work on the same album?

Ville: No, not really. We did the basic tracks with a Finish fellow called T.T (Oksala). Then erm, well we only used 1 producer:Kevin Shirley, who flew in and did some additional stuff. We just ran out of ideas and he gave us a couple of new ideas and we re-recorded 2 songs. There was loads of people mixing the album but it's a hassle, it's a very complicated soup or cocktail or however you want to put it.

Stu Bru: You don't seem too happy about that.

Ville: Well it could've been done a lot simpler. You know in a way that it created a lot of hassle and a lot of speculation. When you have around 30 and 40 songs all mixed 4 times by different people and a couple of remakes of a couple of tracks, and then you're in a decision, instead of having like 13 good tracks you have tens and tens of tracks to choose from. And that's a waste of time. If that sort of situation would happen again, I'm probably going to loose my hair or whatever because it's really stressful. But basically everybody's happy with the album and that's a good thing and we're really glad just to have it finished because the last months were just endless meetings, endless speculation and everybody in the band liked different versions of different songs. So you know it's easier to just do 1 version and that's it.

Stu Bru: But that's obviously, you are the heart of the band so you make the decisions.

Ville: Well me and the bass-player and the guitar-player. Our guitar-player is a quiet person. He rarely has any sort of opinion on anything. Me and the bass-player we were really speculating on that. Talking with record company people and stuff like that as well. The keyboard player is new. He just came join our band in between recording the album so most of the keyboards are done by me and stuff like that. But it's pretty hard usually I'm the one to blame, you know, I'm the one that has to carry the burden about making decisions.

Stu Bru: Was there a certain sound, a certain musical inspiration that you want to deal with on this album?

Ville: I hate the situation because first our album is really old and we already have new songs. I've got like almost an album's worth already. And so it's pretty hard too really, because we did it for such a long time in the studio kinda like your opinions change on your musical things you're into, they change in 10 months many times so basically for me personally I've liked the idea of it being like Bon Jovi and Mushrooms. Like having it really straight but still like there's something weird bubbling under so it's not your average adult orientated rock album so it's a bit weirder then that.

Stu Bru: And the Bio I read something about that you make Scandinavian Blues.

Ville: We started something when we released the first album and somebody's got to finish it soon. But because you know people had a hard time labelling us we called the first album love metal and the second album we called goth'n roll so we had to invent a stupid term for this one as well. Scandinavian blues basically it's erm it's pretty tongue in cheek but it's the melancholy which is very present in our music that's very Scandinavian. Scandinavian folk music and like Finish old 70's pop music or whatever, it's always really sad and we've been growing up with that sort of stuff so of course it effects us like 50% of that and then 50% is basically based on blues all your Elvis Presley's, Iggy Pop or what ever you know.

Stu Bru: there's an inscription on the cd…

Ville: Iggy Pop, yeah. Our guitar player freaked on Iggy like big time. Like a couple of months ago when we were doing the finishing touches on the record and he bought when he went to New York, he bought like 12 Iggy t-shirts, he's bought all the albums a couple of them like twice because he wanted to put some of them on the walls. And stuff like that, he's completely mad. That's basically my present to the guitar player because he didn't see that before it came out of "prim". And we met Iggy Pop a couple of months ago in Germany sort of TV Awards Viva TV Comet awards or whatever it was. And the funny thing was that Iggy was there presenting an award which we won which was kinda cool.

Stu Bru: So the guitar-player totally freaked out.

Ville: yeah we met him backstage there, and nobody could speak anything, you know it was a really cool fellow. We're planning on, we have to ask whether we can use it, because it's really cool, and the whole thing after the nominees have been selected and stuff like that there's loads of applause and then the voice of Iggy says: "And the winner is HIM" And that's really cool, we tried to ask from Iggy's management and the TV company if we can use it on a record or use it wherever you know, it's pretty funny.