Synnin Viemaa

Shadows, lights and nerves breakdowns
Page 195-203

Deep Shadows & Brilliant Highlight and terrible memories

HIM started to record the third album's songs after exhausting Razorblade Romance tour. After recording the demos the feelings were really high, but soon the band, the record company and many others started to fight. Welcome crises!

"Deep Shadows & Brilliant Highlights" sucked to do. We have been lying all the time in public that it would've been nice but in reality it was just terrible", - Ville Valo says about HIM third album.

HIM wanted themselves that album would be recorded in Finland. During the Razorblade Romance tour they had been traveling so much, that the guys wanted to sleep in their own beds. It's really much easier to go to Finnvox studios than to go outside Finland to so called "famous" studio. And HIM wanted to save also in payment. They realized that with "Razorblade Romance" they had burned money in a stupid way.

<…>

In the demo sessions there was fun, and the band loved the final result so much that they decided to keep a big part of demos. The record company said it was a bad idea.

"People from BMG think T.T. Oksala is a fucking producer. "You can't use that kind of old man" they said, - Ville says. - So they had to find expensive famous producers from outside of Finland. There came people we wouldn't want to work with. <…> There were great moments in this record, but the whole making process was so shallow that this record doesn't give so nice feelings".

<…>

A cover for the record had been already made in Finland. But the English people said: "In Finland you can't do covers!" So Ville had to go to England where Rankin took new pictures of him.

<…>

Afterwards Ville confesses that everything wasn't pain in this record. Of course he's happy with a few songs on DS&BH. But because of busy time and festival gigs few songs were mixed without Ville and those songs have mistakes, which should've been fixed.

"For the first time in my career I got sick and tired of making a record. There were too many people, so at the final part I wasn't even interested. I was just waiting to get this record out, so I didn't have to think about it any more", - says Ville.

<…>

"The band members and people from the record company think DS&BH is a negative thing, even though it's positive that the record is made, - Ville says. - Surely DS&BH changed our way to make records. We were too kind and listened to too many people. It wasn't about compromises, but there were too many people telling what to do next. Then you start to think yourself, what's right".

Translated by MaYu

Scans 1