HIM Talks About New Album

Posted by Mitch Michaels on 12.30.2009

Ville Valo says new album will have Depeche Mode, 80's vibe...

HIM frontman Ville Valo says that "accessibility was a key factor" in making their new album Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice, which hits stores on February 9th.

Valo said he wanted the record to "kind of have the similar vibe as Depeche Mode's classic albums such as Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion -- brooding, melancholy albums but they still make you want to dance. The big picture production view I had was to have the rock in there so you could drink a beer and do all things legal and illegal but then hopefully have that more poetic and sensitive sensibility in there as well."

For his own part, Valo has given up some of his own vices. "I quit drinking -- not for good but for awhile -- about two and a half years ago," he says. "This is the first album I wrote fully sober, and I wanted to put all the energy I used to put into hanging out in pubs into working on the music. So it was pretty insane, working 18-hour days for the past year, year and a half. We really went for all those details and didn't leave any stone unturned. Hopefully it shows."

For Screamworks, Valo also cites Duran Duran, Kraftwerk, a-ha and Pink Floyd's "On the Run" as influences. "In the past we used synthesizers to emulate real instruments -- piano and strings and all that," Valo notes. "This time we wanted all the synths to sound like synths. It's a pretty 80s album for us, but I grew up in the 80s and I love the 80s because the 80s, musically, was about melody and huge choruses. That's very essential for me."

Credit: Billboard