Following the dissolution of his lifelong band Him, Ville Valo faced an identity crisis. Now reborn as solo artist VV, he’s got a new heartagram and a bright future

SONNETS: ALEXANDER MILAS • ILLUMINATIONS: JOHN MCMURTRIE

Post-Him and postpandemic, Ville Valo has reinvented his work

It’s a gloomy November evening in London and inside the crystalline bowels of the Universal Music tower there are dark goings-on under a winter moon. An arcane gathering of power brokers, decision makers and tastemakers has convened to hear the first, dulcet tones of a new record in its entirety – alyrical and melodious exsanguination called Neon Noir. Less an album, the subject of tonight’s attention is more like a swan song played in reverse or a departed loved one’s voice heard in the wind. We’ll get to that.

There are no robes here, such vestigial ornaments long since done away with to provide anonymity on public transportation, but the importance of these proceedings is in no way diminished. This is how the music industry in all its mysterious dealings determines where and when its various powers are to be invoked – an Illuminati-like network of aligned hands is this rogues’ gallery of journalists, label managers and festival promoters. Even the helmswoman of the gazette you hold in your very hands can be seen lurking in the shadows.

At the centre of the dim chamber stands a lone, flatcapped figure, his chiselled visage peculiarly, vampirically unchanged by the many years since he first graced the cover of an international publication such as this, and let it be said that he was never a stranger to these folios.

If anything can be said of Ville Valo’s appearance it’s that he could teach anyone half his age a thing or two about self-presentation – and, for the record, they’d be 23 at time of publication. Svelte, casually besuited and elegantly understated in his attire – all different hues of black, obviously – he’s been affably chatting with the gathered conclave with such fluidity and confidence that anyone would think it’s something he does every day, and anyone who knows his incongruous penchant for reclusiveness when off the stage would suspect that maybe he’s changed since we saw him last.

For the record, he does not, and he has not. Ten long years have passed since His Infernal Majesty’s final release, the career summation that was 2013’s Tears On Tape, and it has been five years since Him played their final note on the second of two sold-out nights at the London Roundhouse in December of 2017. Their concluding song was the aptly chosen, syrupy dirge of When Love And Death Embrace, and the mortuary pallor of its refrains couldn’t have been better matched to the forlorn mood of that distinctly funereal moment.

For many, it was a farewell to one of life’s few constants: Him were less like a band and more like a comforting gothic world to those who fell prey to its blackened enchantments, and as if further affirmation is needed, no one in the field of music has since emerged to even remotely fill the heartagram-shaped hole left in Ville’s wake. As the lights in the venue went up to reveal no shortage of streaked mascara, it would have been impossible to surmise whether we’d ever hear from Ville again – such was the finality of that tour and the deathly vibe of that night.