Sonic Seducer
/october 2005/

Ville and Cristina's Interview

Have you met before?
Ville: I know Lacuna Coil as band since their first EP, which at that timea friend slipped to me, who worked in a record shop. At that time the sound was even a bit more pop-like, because of that I like this mini-album very much. Nowadays I would prefer to listen to My Dying Bride, in the meantime your are for my taste a bit to heavy and dark. But I´m really looking forward to your new album. Personally we met each other at festivals.
Cristina: I think you make wonderful music and have your own unmistakeable style and you never care about what people say. I saw and heard HIM for the first time at a small club concert in Milan. I guess my favourite song is still "Join Me", just because I don´t know the other ones so well.

Do you see any parallels and common ground between HIM and Lacuna Coil and you two personally?
Ville: Well, a good taste for music.
Cristina is giggling.
Ville: She is Italian and I´m a Finn, so we are both very passionate when it´s about music and we put much heart and feeling in what we do.
Cristina: I agree, but I was very surprised that you are from Finland. Usually I noticed Scandinavian artists and their music in a different way. At first they are cold and unmoved mostly, but when they get to know you better, they almost turn into Italians!
Ville: As a Finn I´m half Hungarian.
Cristina: For an Italian you are too tall and to white and these blue eyes...
Ville: Green. And i don´t cook. Will you cook for me the next time?
Cristina: Ok. Men don´t cook in reality anyway.
Ville: I´m cooking often my favourite meal Thai for me and my girlfriend. That´s a good choice to keep yourself fit on tour.
Cristina: Oh, and there´s always something to learn. I like everything, when we are talking about food, you could also say I really like to eat. To eat is like a religion for us, we could never do without. Well, I´m hungry, will we get something right now?

There is something else you have obviously in common. In both bands the focus is a lot on you personally.
Ville: Yes, but that is so because of the media.
Cristina: They always pounce on the vocalist.
Ville: For HIM there is another reason though. Different as in Lacuna Coil I´m writing all songs, too, and for that reason I can tell more about it. My bandmates are more the calm ones and don´t like interviews and video shootings, in a way I digged my own grave.
Cristina: I guess, for myself the reason is that I´m a woman. As long as it isn´t doubt that I can sing, it doesn´t matter.
Ville: But it´s fantastic to be a good looking woman!
Cristina: It is no problem for me and as well not for the guys, they don´t get mad with it. I´m just something as a sign.

Do you feel more responsible for the success of the band like the head of a family?
Cristina: Yes, it could be described this way.
Ville: More as the drunken uncle.
Cristina: Or the black sheep.
You are both very charismatic and good looking...
Ville (interrupting): Back in time.
Cristina: I´m getting older, too...
Ville: Well, I think older men are looking better, cooler and sexier than young guys. That´s the same with women, who get older in dignity. I like this flabby skin.
Cristina: That´s right. Tomorrow I´ll be 33 years old and I´m proud of it.
Ville: That is the only possibility. (grins)
Cristina: Most are dying already at the age of 20. Their life follows a plan: Job, marriage, children and at the age of 40 they are fat and watching TV and complain about the past. That is really terrible and because of that I don´t feel old or like 33.
Ville: I like the imagination to be old, to discuss political and religious thing with grey hair. That´s the reason why I try to experience as much as possible now to gather wisdom. Maybe I will do something else and become a mathemetician or so, I love mathematics.
Cristina: I hate maths. But I could become a cook and plant on a farm my own vegetables and have animals, that wouldn´t be bad. Although to get old is something different for a woman than a man.

Ville: I think older women are more attractive than younger ones. It´s not only the appearance but also that what comes across, that life was lived with many experiences and also faults.
Cristina: I think faults of the appearance are very interesting. Because of that these American women are so awful: Artificial identical formed Barbies without personality. I prefer it if somebody is not so perfect beautiful. I think it is here inside ( taps on her chest). It´s something about personality and maybe also a personal style. It´s only natural that it helps to get attention. But people are not stupid. If you are only looking good, they might buy some posters of you, but for that reason they wouldn´t buy a record of you.
Ville: There is sexual beauty, artistic beauty, spiritual beauty, but who cares. We are all still seeking our soul mate, somebody we could spend our life, somebody who is sexual attractive in a way, that you always feel like a little boy or girl and with whom you can communicate a lot on an intellectual level. I believe then is beauty taken out in the physical way from this person.

Do you like to expose yourself?
Cristina (now it´s not longer possible to hold her back, maybe because the backstage-catering is finishing in an hour): That´s funny, it´s like a game to experiment with your image. In the beginning I was very, very shy and it didn´t match at all, that I had to be to the fore as a vocalist. It is fantastic that I now own the self-confidence to stand there and to feel comfortable.
Ville: We were very shy, too. These times I had long hair to hide myself behind.

Would you be able to live a normal life again and in which ways have your life styles changed with success?
Ville: As "Join Me" was in the charts and the teenie mags reported about us, it was a little bit difficult, screaming teenies were following us everywhere. It is not always nice if 12-year-old put chocolate in your mail box while you are sitting in your room and masturbate, but I think, that is a small price we pay for indulging in our passion of music and to earn our lives with it. We travel around the world, meet nice people with similar interests, ust to be allowed to play at this festival is great. I come from a working class family, my father was a taxi driver and then he sold dildos. It is really nice for me, that I could pay cigarettes and rent by myself at the age of 20. Many years I had to ration it and had to think twice about every penny to spend. Now we are often in the daily press of Helsinki and we are invited to the celebration of the Independence Day at the Presidents house. I really have to say that I definite accept a little bit stalking more (his gaze roams lost in thougt to BAM who is white as a sheet) than to get nothing out of it. In addition our fans have been growing up with us and are nowadays very respectful. If somebody wants to have a photo or an autograph it´s really no problem. They don´t try anymore to become friends with you, what is very pleasant.
Cristina (pressing her hand in the pit of her stomach): It´s the same with us. On the other hand Metal will never be appreciated like Mainstream-music in Italy. Lacuna coil is only known by the scene, but when we play at the appropriate clubs people don´t behave as we were rockstars. We don´t want to belong to the Jet-Set. All those who do nothing else than to be photographed on parties and appear at TV-shows, that is so thick. I´m glad that I don´t belong to it because fortunately I have a brain. Only one time there was someone who wrote me very vulgar letters, but between the lines you could read that he was a very frail person, so I was not afraid of it. Without make-up I look 10 years younger anyway, nobody recognizes me then.

What is the funniest rumour you have ever heard about yourself?
Ville: Oh my god... I have always told, that you make your thing good when there are many bootlegs of yourself circulating, you have a lot of fansites and there are a lot of rumours about you.
Cristina: Wow, I´m good at this! Well, I have a new boyfriend every day, I´m a pregnant lesbian, had been married and was divorced several times.
Ville: I really don´t want to know how many girls I should have made pregnant. Anyway I weared for some time a beanie, cause I had a chemotherapy there...

Are there phases you are tired of your being an artist, for example after making a new album?
Cristina: No not really. At first I have a lot of friends, who build me up each time and than it is wonderful that I´m allowed to call something creative as work. I would freak out if I had to sit behind a desk in an office.
Ville: Hm. When you have worked on an album and you putted in all feelings, all intellect, all your reserves, physical and psychological, you feel after it for a short time a complete vacuum. Some kind of depession as woman have in childbed. But happyness is overrated anyway.

Are you superstitious?
Cristina: Not at all.
Ville: The complete opposite, I love it. Recently the BBC reported about the finding of the oldest Bible, according to it "The Number Of The Beast" should not bev666 but 616. Since that I like it to be in hotelrooms which have the number 616.

Disastrous noises come across from the lavatory. BAM staggers along again.
Ville (fatherly): Never smoke pot with Billy Idol!
Cristina: Do you think we get something to eat yet?

Spontaneous: What was the most impressive moment of your career so far?
Ville: When we got our first contract at a label, that was magical. I remember that phone call and that I had a date for a rehearsal directly after it. It was a wonderful day in spring and I tried to act unobtrusive to drop the bombshell later. But the guys noticed at once, that there was something wrong, because I was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Cristina: I was bowled over as the both biggest Rock-radio-stations in America begin to broadcast a song of us again and again and from that point it was spread over all the other radiostations, that was cool!

What could make you today as happy as at that time?
Ville: To come home, to relax and to sleep with my love.
Cristina: Tomorrow is my birthday, it will be nice to come home then. And I really would like to eat now something!

By four_moons