Ville Hermanni Valo, by Desiree Darnell

H.I.M. and his Kin

Ville Hermanni Valo was born in Vallila, Finland, a suburb of Helsinki, on November 22, 1976 at 8:28 a.m. He was born with both Finnish and Hungarian blood. The Finnish blood came from his father, Kari, and the Hungarian blood came from his 'mum', Anita. In English translation, his name is 'William Herman Light'. He is thirty years old at this writing, April 2007.

Ville Valo has a younger brother by seven years, named Jesse. “In their childhood, as youngsters they would fight like cats and dogs", claims Ville. Before Ville had his little brother Jesse around, he had another sibling, Sami, but he wasn't human. Instead, this brother was a dog that his parents had rescued from a gutter.

Sami was a role model that taught Ville how to walk but didn't teach him how to use the bathroom all over the place. When Sami passed away, not only was Ville extremely upset, he also apparently developed his allergies to animals and asthma at the same time.

Now, since Jesse and Ville are grown up, Ville is very proud of the fact that his brother is a Thai boxer who has won the Finnish championships twice. Ville Valo believes his brother is going to be a great body guard for himself in the future.

Ville’s beginning of his musical career started in his home experience. All his life, Ville was exposed to music. His music-loving parents exposed him to the songs of popular Finnish performers such as Tapio Rautavaara and Rauli Badding Somerjoki, a Finnish rock singer. To calm him down when crying, his father would play Paratiisi, by Somerjoki. His mother would take him in her arms and dance. Baby boy Ville would slowly cease his crying.

When Ville was two years old, he went to a party and saw an Elvis impersonator. He picked up a bongo drum and started banging it while 'Elvis' sung. Then, when Ville was nine years old, he attended the Pop and Jazz Conservatory in Helsinki, introducing him to a few other music genres that he studied. Later on in life, his older cousin had introduced him to the heavier sounds of bands like KISS, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden.

In school, Ville made very good grades and was very easy going during class. He was great with math and biology. But outside class he was a trouble-maker. He was known to be 'tough' and would often get in fights. During his middle school years, he had fallen in love with a girl who loved his best friend. That love triangle caused him to write his first song, changing 'everything' in his life as he continued writing songs. His interests gradually expanded to include reggae, early blues and country-oriented material such as Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Neil Young. Following great songwriters, he was preparing himself for a brilliant future, developing his own music genre.

Ville remembers being young and naïve when he went to a music store and picked out a KISS album. He was unfamiliar with the group or what the members looked like. He was curious what variety they were. The album's title was 'Animalize', and the cover had animal fur printed on it, which attracted the teenager. He then turned the record over and saw what the band looked like and how he had never seen anything like that before. It was then, when he realized that that was what he wanted to do, be something 'different'.

Ville then joined bands that did cover songs with some of their own things. The bands that he was in are: Helsinki-based bands: B.L.O.O.D., 1986-89, Eloveena Boys, 1987-88, Kemoterapia 1989-97 and numerous other, more obscure projects, such as Aurora; Charlie Parker; Terapia; Winha; Unga Kaskelottär; Natas; and Donits-Osmo. He has leadership qualities as lead singer, songwriter, as he also played the bass guitar, drums and guitar.
Ville formed H.I.M., His Infernal Majesty, in the summer of 1995, gathering together some old friends who shared his vision of a new kind of rock Ville himself calls 'love metal'. Since then, the band's members have changed a couple of times but Ville, Migé and Linde have been with the band from the beginning, and are accompanied with Gas and Burton.

Since 1995, Ville has had many different hairstyles, eye colors, and tattoos, including a pair of Edgar Allan Poe's eyes on his shoulder blades. On stage he usually wears jeans and either doesn't wear a top or wears a t-shirt. On his first singing performance, he wore brown corduroy pants, afraid he would have an 'accident' since he was so nervous
He has dark brunette hair, either green or blue eyes, is 6'2", and has a slim body. His hair is now cut short, but used to reach his shoulders. On appearances in videos, on you tube or in 'Viva La Bam', he usually wears a black heart-a-gram beanie. Some songs that hit the charts are;

Wings of a Butterfly and ‘Killing Loneliness' off of the album 'Dark Light', 2006;
The Sacrament and 'Funeral of Hearts' off of the album 'Love Metal', 2005;
Join Me in Death', 'Poison Girl', and 'Gone with the Sin', off Razorblade Romance, 2000.

Ville gets song writing ideas while sitting in the middle of a big pentagram on one of his floors. He also got the idea of his band's logo, the heart-a-gram, from the pentagram. Instead of a star in the middle of a circle, it's a heart and a triangle inside of a circle. The Heartagram is like a yin-yang -- opposite and complementary forces in Chinese thought, from Chinese words meaning shaded and sunny; signifying good and evil.

He writes Gothic lyrics with a lot of symbolism. A kind of symbolism that can inspire people to appreciate and express feelings. His music also lets people escape, move you, bring you to the verge of tears and leave their mark on you forever.