By now, the rock world has undoubtedly seen countless internal fights, some of the most violent. Generally, the end of the story was obvious, parting ways. However, there were sometimes other scenarios, as in the case of Metallica, who went to group therapy to solve their problems. During a conversation with Sonic Seducer, Ville Valo revealed that HIM opted for a split rather than following Metallica’s road.
“It took quite a long time for us to realize that the story of HIM had ended,” the singer said. “After ‘Tears On Tape,’ Gas [Mika Kristian Karppinen], the drummer, left the band. Then we found a new guy. We toured a bit. We tried to get everything to work. But it just didn’t sound as good as we wanted to. I think that we lost the spark, so to speak.”
Valo continued, “And we tried to be adult about it and realized that maybe it’s just not our time because you couldn’t blame us for not trying. We really tried to figure out… We didn’t go to any therapy sessions — we didn’t go down the Metallica road— but we sat down long and hard and tried to figure out if there was anything we could give the world musically and decided it was the perfect time to end it.”
Although HIM had many setbacks, it is fair to say that it survived them quite well. They could stay on stage for over 20 years despite short hiatuses. At the end of the day, they all felt they had reached the end of their musical path together.
Valo also said similar things after their separation announcements in 2017. He said that after a quarter of a century with metal and love, they had solved the puzzle and completed the pattern. So, they had nothing left to explore together and should’ve done that to discover new music.
In other words, they did not wear themselves out by trying and forcing but accepted that they had already lost the ‘spark’ they had in their togetherness, and it was now time to part ways. As you know, creative reasons are the most cliché claim we’ve heard about band splits, but in the HIM case, it really seems like the root issue.
