Unpopular Opinions: The HIM and Ville Valo bandwagon

Greetings all,

A chewing, gnawing thing had entered my subconscious as I arose from my slumber in Ph0sph0rr0r towers this morning. I'm not entirely sure where it stemmed from, may have been Twitter – I don't know. Somebody, somewhere had mentioned HIM – and someone of whom I don't even follow had decided to gatecrash my discussion with another follower with regards to what I believe are the best albums and why they piss me off now. In this case, clearly a blinkered follower just had a problem with any constructive criticism about the band.

Therefore, I have decided to type this blog as a means of catharsis as such. Because, one thing I CANNOT abide more than anything which is in the top five of my hates are bandwagons.

Call me a snob, but one thing I don't particularly like is when a band starts trending and everybody likes them. I like a band when it was just “My CD”, when I had found them (apparently) before anyone else. HIM were an interesting band, Gothic tinged alternative metal which reminded me of many different things but were somehow individual in their own right. They were curiously likable, came from a country not really renown for such music and were quite unlike anything I'd heard at the time (apart from Sentenced, Nightwish and Impaled Nazarene). Nightwish were even weirder again – some really fit dark haired girlie performing operatic warbling over power metal? The Oceanborn album was spectacular when I first heard it and really special – but I'm going off the point slightly here. Also, at the time it was when I first started seeing J and who had also shared a liking for the band so the band has a particularly strong memory for me due to this via music listening association.

Such bands from such a strange country couldn't become THAT popular, surely?

Apparently – YES.

Overnight, it appeared that there was a metric fuck tonne of teenage hoards appeared overnight with an alarming pop music-esque worship of HIM – which completely and totally got on my tits. It also synchronized perfectly with the period of time when MTV Jackass and Dirty Sanchez was on heavy rotation on TV, wherby Bam Margera was usually featured being permanently up the arse of Villa Valo with the fucking heartagram being scribbled on what appeared to be bloody everything.

I remember a particular instance of turning into the “Metal Gestapo” one evening, while I was waiting for a train into Liverpool to go to the Krazyhouse (this was many years ago before it turned to shit and the likes of my 'Ethnic Group' quit going to it). This person held what appeared to be a blind fanaticism of Ville Valo and had emulated their look – down to a bloody stupid pinstriped blazer that had been daubed with various slogans and the heartagram logo all over the fucking place. I quizzed them, and they didn't know anything about the first album or the side project called Daniel Lioneye – and I showed them up as a fraud. Okay, this may have been a bit twattish of me but it clearly showed bandwagonism and just liking something because everybody else did and they didn't formulate an independent opinion of their own.

What really got on my fucking tits was the fame that occurred due to Bam Margera being permanently wedged up Ville Valo's poop shoot and mutual masturbation (of which Ville Valo eventually got sick of, it transpired in a Kerrang interview – apparently), and the fame began to take its toll. I have seen HIM twice so far, and the second time I vowed to never listen to or purchase any more of their albums ever again. The first time, HIM were a pretty decent band.

However, the second time I seen them was a completely different story.

The next time around I had seen them, they were playing some small dive somewhere in Liverpool, and had Cathedral as support. On the face of it, this was a very odd lineup – but Ville Vallo apparently had a liking for the far heavier side of metal which is why he asked them to support. Sadly, nobody gave a flying fuck about Cathedral – which disappointed me greatly as I shared a liking for both bands at the time. The crowd was basically a sea of irritating teenybopper 'mini metal' types, and you could be forgiven for thinking that you were at a Top of the Pops gig due to all the teenage hormonal screaming. Then, Ville Valo and his merry men came on stage, and were completely piss poor. Ville Valo was just too smashed off his face, mumbling incoherently into a Mic and I really don't know how I managed to sit the whole thing out. Eventually, the gig ended and there was lots of excited babbling from these kids who had not know anything better and thought that the performance was the best thing ever. Needless to say, I told J in no uncertain terms that I would not go to see them again or give Ville Valo any more of my cash as he basically tuned into a Goth equivalent of Jim Morrison and was too wrecked to perform a gig properly.

The blind adoration of the band continued, and I chose to distance myself VERY fucking far away from once liking them. J had proceeded to see them a third time with a friend of hers because I point blank refused to go, which at the time I found completely baffling. This time around, J and her friend found their live performance even worse AND YET more of these teenybopper friends showed up to see them – and worryingly some of my friends who I though should have known better to have gone throwing cash at them (who I thought needed their fucking heads testing for doing so).

That quirky little Finnish band, wasn't mine anymore. Alas.

I'm all for more people liking Metal and Goth, and naturally some of my younger friends have to start somewhere and weren't fortunate to get into it all in a 'Pre Nu-Metal Era' like myself. But, when a bandwagon is a bandwagon for bandwagon's sake and it over-rules common sense then where the fuck does it truly end? After all, when it starts getting like that then it's no different than listening to chart music.

So far, I think I can sleep soundly at night in the knowledge that Death/Black Metal will never become mainstream, ditto the 'Proper Goth' scence and is my little misunderstood masonic-esque group.

This said, the day I see a Darkthrone T shirt in Primark – will be a very worrying day and I only prey that it doesn't happen. This may be the further basis for a cheese fuelled nightmare.

Stay tuned...